


Enemy of My Enemy

by partypaprika



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, M/M, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:54:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23960380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/partypaprika/pseuds/partypaprika
Summary: Bennett was living a quiet life in Little Vichou when he met Nathaniel Langren. Although that wasn't quite right--they'd been enemies before. A long time ago. Not so long ago. Enemies. Not anymore.
Relationships: Dark Mage/Assassin From Enemy Country
Comments: 15
Kudos: 27
Collections: Id Pro Quo 2020





	Enemy of My Enemy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Cruria, I hope that you enjoy!

Bennett’s pharmacy stood at a crossroads just outside of Little Vichou, a small town of about a little over one thousand people. Up until the civil war, Little Vichou had often been thought of as an artist’s enclave with the surrounding lush national forests and the winding Vichou river nearby providing ample inspiration.

Bennett had moved to Little Vichou after the fighting had ceased. He had seen pictures of Little Vichou in its former glory—tall, stately glass buildings that mimicked the style in the Glass City. The buildings melted into the forest one day and mirrored the bold blue sky the next. The pride of the town had been its city hall with liquid glass designs which unceasingly refreshed themselves. But by the time that Bennett had moved there, the tech bombs had done enough damage that most of its buildings had been destroyed and remade out of inert marble, wood or brick. Only now, several years after the ceasefire, had people begun to rebuild the once marvelous glass structures.

Bennett had deliberately chosen an out of the way, run-down glass building for his pharmacy and he’d bought a small house about a mile away built almost entirely of inert materials, wood and brick, nestled in the forest. There was another small pharmacy in town, really only of use for basics or emergencies, so he received a decent amount of business from residents, but still managed to avoid all but the most intrepid of travelers visiting his shop.

A soft ping sounded in Bennett’s ear letting him know that a visitor was approaching the store. Through the glass walls, Bennett saw a man pull up in a black car, the wheels coming to a stop and then reversing back into the car just as the transparent windshield, which curled around the car in order to allow all potential passengers an unrestricted view of the road and scenery, turned opaque and lifted.

A man with tousled dirty blond hair and the beginnings of a beard emerged, his tanned olive skin warm in the morning light. He wore a tight-fitting jacket, the nanotech shimmering slightly through it as he walked, and a black pair of pants, casual brown shoes. Bennett had been around long enough to know that this guy wasn’t local. Probably taking a trip from Rothelock in the southeast.

The store announced the man’s presence when he entered and Bennett smiled over at him, standing up from where he’d been inventorying the skin repair patches.

“Hi, can I help you?” Bennett asked.

The man smiled at Bennett and headed towards him. “I think that you can,” the man said, speaking with his a’s just a touch soft. It charmed Bennett. “I’m Nathaniel.” He held out his hand and Bennett took it, the man’s hand warm in his.

“Bennett,” Bennett said—or started to say—as Nathaniel grabbed Bennett’s shoulder, spinning him around before Bennett could even track the movement. Bennett immediately froze, panic running through his veins, and then he felt the cold, sharp edge of an s-knife pressing against his throat.

“P-p-please,” Bennett got out, his voice catching, thin and small in the room. “You can have whatever you want, I promise I won’t say anything. Whatever drugs you need, I will give them to you. I can transfer you credits. You can have my money.”

If Bennett had had the common sense to get a halfway decent security system, the man probably would have been immobilized by now or at least the police would have been on their way. But, there was no comfort there. No police would be coming, and Bennett could feel the edges of the blade change, smoothing and sharpening against his throat, biting into his skin.

“Please,” Bennett said, tears beginning to well up. “Whatever you want.”

“Killer Keasey,” Nathaniel said softly. “You’ve fallen even farther than I thought.”

Bennett stiffened at the old nickname, panic rising in him. The man’s chest was firm behind him and Nathaniel’s arm held him securely even as the s-knife grew sharper still. Bennett could feel a warm drop of blood slide down his throat, soaking the collar of his shirt.

“Please,” the word slipping out before Bennett could reign it back in. With certainty, he knew that he was going to die for his past sins right then and there, with his legs shaking so badly the stranger that would soon slit his neck needing to hold him up. He hadn’t seen this end for himself—he could feel warm tears tracking down his face and he forced his head up. He would go to his death looking it in the face.

“God, you’re pathetic,” Nathaniel said and Bennett felt the painful edge of the s-knife cut in sharply once more. All at once, Nathaniel pull the s-knife away and spun Bennett back around. Before Bennett could react to his relative newfound freedom, Nathaniel slapped a pair of ferry bracelets over Bennett’s wrists. He hadn’t seen a pair of ferry bracelets in years—they were prohibitively expensive to buy as they were made of flexible steel integrated with dinitrogen dentoxide and were designed to inhibit if not outright immobilize magic, depending on the strength of the magic-user.

Bennett looked down at his wrists where smooth white bracelets contrasted with his dark brown skin, binding his wrists together and he felt a faint burning sensation everywhere they touched. Fresh horror spread through him. “You’re from the east—East Andna,” Bennett said. The way that he pronounced his a’s should have been a complete giveaway. And besides his accent, who else would have a grudge to pick with him? Who else would take the time to track him down, traveling to an out-of-the-way pharmacy for an out-of-the-way town? Who else would have access to a pair of ferry bracelets?

“At least you’re not completely stupid as well,” Nathaniel said. “Even if you are just stupidly incompetent about protecting yourself. I guess the rumors are true. Killer Keasey has lost his touch.”

The initial attack had been a test—Nathaniel’s way of seeing what magic Bennett could use against him. Inevitably, Nathaniel probably was wearing ferry-tech clothing. It would have mitigated all but the most powerful magic. But the joke was on Nathaniel. There was nothing that Bennett could use against him.

“I can’t do that anymore,” Bennett said.

“There are, what, a hundred mages in the country?” Nathaniel said.

Bennett gulped. “Less.”

“And you were the best of all of them,” Nathaniel said softly. His eyes went distant and Bennett wondered if Nathaniel was remembering the same things that Bennett was—the horrible raids on East Andnan bases. The human damage that Bennett had done or aided. If he was here to kill Bennett than it was no worse than Bennett deserved.

After another moment, Nathaniel came back to himself. “I don’t care,” Nathaniel said and as he spoke, the light caught faint white scar tissue running down the side of his neck and continuing underneath his shirt, now molded to as armor. Bennett took a step back.

“I know you,” Bennett said, another wave of fear washing over him, so thick that Bennett thought that he might throw up.

A memory came to Bennett, unwillingly, of people screaming, smoke pouring in, coughing, convinced that he was going to die and almost welcoming it. An East Andnan man had reached for Bennett, a knife shining brightly, catching the light, and Bennett reacted purely on instinct, reaching up and letting his power flow through him, scalding the man where he’d made contact even as the man threw up a ferry shield. He’d been one of East Andna’s best operatives and Bennett’s mission: Nathaniel Langren. Bennett hadn’t succeeded, even if he’d left his mark. His superiors had not been pleased.

The face of the man matched Bennett’s memories, although he’d been lean and wiry when they’d last met, almost five years ago. Now the man was corded muscle, pure lethality if one happened to know where to look for it. And based on the intent focus of the man as he looked at Bennett, he was planning on using it. Bennett was well and truly fucked.

There was nothing that Bennett could say, no apology that he could make, and so he closed his eyes as two more tears slipped out.

Nathaniel laughed and Bennett’s eyes flew open. “I’m not going to kill you,” Nathaniel said. “Yet. I need something from you. I need to get into the Cloud City and you’re going to help me do it.”

The Cloud City was the popular name given to Andina City due to its location, once the capital of all of Andna and now the capital of West Andna. Many kings and queens ago, a queen had decided that it was too dangerous to live amongst the people—too many opportunities for unrest directed in her direction. So she’d built a tech-powered fortress that hovered above what was now the other half of Andina City: the Glass City. The floating city had the advantage of being very difficult to enter without the proper permissions.

“I can’t get you into the Cloud City,” Bennett said, his words rushing together. “I can’t do magic. And even if I did, why would I get you into the Cloud City where you could kill any number of the King’s army? I won’t do it.” He said the last part with more defiance than he felt and clenched his jaw against the fear riding him.

“Bennett Keasey,” Nathaniel said and he took a step back and gave Bennett a complete look-over before he smiled. It would have been charming if he hadn’t been holding a slick s-knife, its blade now dull but ready to be deadly in a nanosecond. “You’re from Vanier. A lovely little town. Tell me if I have this right: you were taken from your parents as a young child by the crown once it was determined that you could work magic. They were given compensation for your loss.

“Your parents are Addison Keasey and Tanner Redford. Your father is now deceased, but your mother is currently healthy. For the time being.” Nathaniel looked at Bennett and Bennett saw it for the open threat that it was. “You have a half-sister who you send money to monthly in order to help her with her studies. She’s at the Hampner University, doing reasonably well and studying agricultural engineering. As far as I can tell, you haven’t seen any of your family since you were sent away, but you appear to care for them. I imagine that you would be upset if they were to be maimed or killed.”

Many years ago, when he was a kid, Bennett had dreamed of what he would do when he finished his servitude to the crown. He’d dreamed of traveling, of studying magic—of finding himself and having adventures. When he’d actually left the crown, he’d only wanted one thing. A quiet life. A safe life. Safety for everyone.

“You can’t honestly want my help,” Bennett said. “I can’t do anything for you.” Nathaniel opened his mouth and Bennett rushed to finish. “Even if I agree to help you” –and they both knew that he would— “I have no abilities to speak of.”

“You underestimate your abilities,” Nathaniel said just as a soft ping sounded in Bennett’s ear. He couldn’t help himself from looking towards the road, Nathaniel’s eyes following his. Shit. The sleek brown and blue stripes on the car driving up heralded the arrival of the Little Vichou watch.

“Get behind the drug counter,” Nathaniel ordered. “Now. If you say anything about who I am, you can rest assured that every member of your family will die in a horrifying and excruciating way.” Bennett took off for the drug counter, where the high-grade pharmaceuticals were kept strictly locked up, keyed to Bennett’s biometrics. “Are we clear?”

“Yes,” Bennett said, his pulse racing again, fighting back another wave of nausea. He thought about trying to send a message to his sister or anyone who could warn his family about Nathaniel. But even if he had the courage to attempt a message, Nathaniel Langren almost certainly had already hacked into his communications set-up. There was no doubt in his mind that this was _Nathaniel Langren_. Even on the best of days, Bennett had a shaky relationship with tech. This would be like shooting fish in a barrel for Nathaniel Langren.

The shop announced the watchwoman’s presence and only then did Bennett look down and realize that Nathaniel hadn’t removed the ferry bracelets, burning softly and coldly against his skin. He shoved his hands underneath the counter where they wouldn’t be visible.

“Hi, how are you?” Bennett called, trying to plaster a smile onto his face. It felt like a rigor mortis mask, his face frozen into place as an eternal grimace. He shot a quick glance towards Nathaniel, who was stationed over near the side of the store, appearing to browse through the diagnostic mensuras as if he was planning on purchasing one to take back home to check all of his ailments.

The woman, tall and broad with pale, freckled skin, came into the store, her dark hair tied back and threw a quick smile in Bennett’s direction. “Good, thanks. Just in to grab a tire patch. Should keep me going until I have the time to run a full diagnostic on it.”

Bennett cleared his throat, trying to get sounds to come out in an appropriately nonchalant manner. “Over to the side we have all of our car accessories and repair items. There should be a few options there.”

Nathaniel kept his eyes trained on Bennett the entire time that he spoke and Bennett swallowed, his throat dry beyond reason. He had a thermos of water on his counter, but he couldn’t risk raising his hands and having the watchwoman see the ferry bracelets.

The watchwoman strolled over to the aforementioned area, large items stacked neatly on the bottom row of the aisle, tire repair kits about halfway up in their sleek neon packaging. A few of the more expensive ones had scrolling endorsements and a moving picture of the patch in action, but the woman knew what she was looking for and grabbed a bright green one that was cheap but reliable.

For a second, she turned towards Bennett, as if to have him ring up her purchase manually. Nathaniel’s hand went down low to his back pocket where Bennett just knew that he had to have a gun. Shit.

“My register back here isn’t working properly today—can I ask you to ring yourself up near the front?” Bennett said.

“Not a problem,” the watchwoman said, smiling at Bennett. She headed towards the front of the store, her eye catching on Nathaniel. She looked at his jacket appreciatively. “That is some nice tech there.”

“Thanks,” Nathaniel said neutrally. His hand lay flat against the side of his legs, steady, as if he weren’t a second away from being able to take out half a town.

The watchwoman paused, her head cocked. “I haven’t seen tech like that since…” Bennett’s eyes flew to her wrist and saw the small starred and square tattoo there that he was intimately familiar with. She must have served in the elite guard of the King’s army. Bennett had accompanied the elite forces as they had attempted to infiltrate the East Andnan strongholds in order to support their missions. Their brute force had been devastating and it meant that the watchwoman could be very dangerous as well. Shit.

Bennett wanted to shout something, to take the attention away from Nathaniel before the woman could figure out what she was seeing. But Bennett’s voice wouldn’t come and time moved in a strange parallel track, Bennett unable to insert himself in. Nathaniel’s eyes never left the watchwoman’s and they both saw her arrive at the inevitable conclusion.

In a moment, Nathaniel was on her, kicking her legs out from underneath her so she lay sprawled on the floor before she even had a chance to react. Nathaniel had out his knife, the edge of the blade pressed against her throat as a patch of fiber rapidly spread across her face to gag her mouth. Bennett knew with absolute certainty that Nathaniel would kill her without a second thought.

“Don’t!” Bennett shouted, his voice miraculously back online. “Don’t kill her. Please. Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it.”

Nathaniel’s head shot up and he looked between the watchwoman, her eyes trained on Nathaniel as he held her completely immobile, and Bennett.

“Ok. You come over and help me tie her up.”

Bennett silently pled with the woman while he followed Nathaniel’s directions, taking a thin piece of metal rope from Nathaniel’s pocket. Once Nathaniel had gotten the woman into a sitting position with her arms around a pole anchoring one of the aisles, he wrapped the metal rope around the woman’s wrists anchoring her in place. At a touch, it immediately went taut, all slackness removed and making it near impossible for the woman to get out.

Nathaniel looked it all over with a critical eye and then grabbed Bennett’s shoulder, directing him past the neatly prepared aisles, the items arranged by Bennett with time and thought, his store that he would probably not live to see again. “Now, Bennett,” Nathaniel said.

“Can I—” Bennett started. He wasn’t sure how he was going to finish the sentence. Get his personal effects? Say goodbye? Do anything? It didn’t really matter because the answer would be no regardless. Nathaniel was right. He was pathetic. Once upon a time, he had been the nightmare of the Hamperian continent. Now, he was nothing.

Partly through the almost-empty lot, something zinged past Bennett’s ear. He looked back in surprise to see the watchwoman coming through the doors, her gun drawn and firing. She must have had an implant to dissolve the binding—she really must have been in one of the elite units. Bennett would have appreciated that more if she’d gotten her shit together before Nathaniel had taken her down instead of after Bennett had agreed to do whatever Nathaniel wanted him to.

She fired again, her face determined and Bennett ducked.

“Shit!” Bennett said, just as Nathaniel grabbed Bennett, the windshield splitting to let the two of them in, and Nathaniel pushed him into the open car’s front seat and Bennett quickly moved over to the front passenger seat as the glass closed behind them. Squealing, the car came to life and the tires descended, a loud symphony of noises, and began moving even before the seatbelts had come down from the seat. Bennett was thrown back hard as the car sped off, bullets harmlessly bouncing off the car, as Bennett stopped breathing in fear of one of those bullets shattering the glass and killing both of them.

Only when the road curved and they were completely out of sight of Bennett’s store did Bennett finally take a deep breath. “Oh lord,” he muttered.

He looked over at Nathaniel who had his left hand on the wheel and had activated the car’s diagnostics board in the center console with his right. Nathaniel briefly looked down and pulled out one of the active transmitting chips.

“What are you doing?” Bennett yelped. Those chips controlled everything about a car—Bennett imagined the car flipping over as the system tried to connect and failed, its machinery spinning out of control.

“Relax,” Nathaniel said. “This one doesn’t do anything important—it mainly functions as the vehicle indemnification code. That overeager bluecoat back there almost certainly clocked our ID. If I don’t change it, they’ll trace us before we make it an hour away.” Nathaniel motioned towards a case on the floor. “There’s a new chip in there—can you put it in? It goes in the same exact spot.”

“I don’t think that you want me to do that,” Bennett said and looked meaningfully at Nathaniel.

“Oh, right,” Nathaniel said. “Just hand me the box by your feet.”

The box in question was a small slim opaque box that popped open to reveal at least seven different chips of varying size and color. Even if Bennett had wanted to try and find the right one, he almost certainly would have screwed it up.

Nathaniel glanced down and grabbed one, dividing his attention between the road and the console. “I noticed that your store was low tech as well,” Nathaniel said. “You don’t even have an automatic call in when someone threatens you.”

Bennett sighed. He’d thought about getting a shop assistant installed. “I wanted one. But all I can really handle is the lumi-glass and the smart system. Anything higher tech than that and it’ll—” Bennett waved his fingers, “fritz.”

“Even now?” Nathaniel asked, throwing a look at Bennett.

“Yeah. Although I haven’t tried recently. Happy to check on your car.”

“Let’s not,” Nathaniel said and popped the chip in himself, pressing a button as the diagnostic’s cover slid back into place. The car made a sound like a purr and there was a sudden subtle shift that Bennett knew was the car changing itself. Every single molecule of his being screamed out that this was wrong and he needed to get out of there _now_.

This is fine, Bennett told himself, holding himself closely and forcing himself to take a deep breath in and out. In and out. He hated tech so much.

When he felt slightly less nauseous, he opened his eyes. Nathaniel didn’t even look phased, his attention focused on the road. Bennett took another deep breath and gave himself an opportunity to really look at Nathaniel. He hadn’t had much chance to do so when he thought he was going to die or while being shot at.

Bennett had known about Nathaniel since he’d been thrust into the war at eleven years old or so. Nathaniel had been infamous within the West Andnan military by then—he’d assassinated one of the top West Andnan generals and had almost certainly been the main force dismantling the attempted surprise attack on Setcache, East Andna’s capital.

They’d only met in battle once or twice—Nathaniel wasn’t a soldier, or at least not a conventional one as far as Bennett knew. But, he’d left an impression. Even now, he was the kind of man to instantly make an impression, his face handsome and his body honed like a weapon. 

Although— “Shit,” Bennett said. There was a red patch beginning to stain through Nathaniel’s shirt and Bennett reached over to pull back the sleeve to examine the impact site. Nathaniel had been clipped by one of the watchwoman’s shots—a red, bleeding wound, with white dots littering it. “Double shit. She got you with a sleeper.”

Nathaniel looked over at the wound and twisted his lips. He reached into the door pocket and took out a slim, nude-toned patch. With his teeth, he peeled off the backing, and then slapped it over the wound, hissing at the contact.

Even Bennett could tell that this was a high-quality skin patch, instantly sealing over the wound and integrating into Nathaniel’s skin. In twenty minutes, it would completely flush out the toxins and repair the wound. “Those are military grade,” Bennett said, trying not to sound awed.

“What misconceptions do you have about my background?” Nathaniel said, but he sounded amused instead of annoyed.

“None, I guess,” Bennett said. “I’m still surprised.”

“Give me your transmitter,” Nathaniel said, his eyes still on the road even as one hand snaked over, palm open and waiting expectantly.

Bennett closed his eyes. It had been stupid to hope, but still. He reached into his pocket and pulled the smooth metal transmitter out of it, placing it on Nathaniel’s hand. Nathaniel’s fingers curled around it. He flipped it over and, using one hand, pressed three times against the identifier chip panel. It slid back and Nathaniel slid the window down a fraction and dumped the chip out the window.

Bennett ground down on his teeth. “They can’t track my chip just by itself,” he said.

“Think of it as removing temptation,” Nathaniel said. He grabbed a new chip from his arsenal and fitted it in before turning it back over and fiddling with the screen. “If you try to message anyone other than someone I’ve approved, it won’t work and it’ll send me an alert.”

Bennett sighed and took it back when Nathaniel handed it over.

For a long time, neither one of the said anything, Bennett’s eyes trained on the wide, tall trees, bursting with mid-spring leaves, passing by in a blur that had been his home. He wasn’t sure if it was pragmaticism or fatalism that made him think that this was the sole goodbye that he would get with Little Vichou. The forest had been good to him and the people nice, in the small interactions that he’d had with them.

Eventually, Bennett spoke. “I know that I said that I would do anything. But I’m not going to kill anyone to get you into the Cloud City.” When Bennett finally gathered his courage, he looked over at Nathaniel who had one eye raised in amusement.

“If I needed you to kill someone, I think that I’d be well and truly fucked,” Nathaniel said, his voice warm with unspoken laughter. “You couldn’t even muster up a defense when your life was on the line.”

Bennett didn’t say anything to that, turning back to the window and retracing the decisions that had gotten him here.

“Don’t worry,” Nathaniel said, and his voice was almost kindly, as if he wanted to reassure Bennett. “I’m not actually here to try and kill anyone, my profession notwithstanding.”

“Why are you here then? And what do you want from the Cloud City? You want me to believe that you’re just trying to get into the most heavily guarded place in Andna for kicks? I know you think that I’m pathetic, but give me some credit, I’m not an idiot just because I can’t defend myself.”

“You are an idiot for not learning a new way of defending yourself,” Nathaniel said. “That aside, of course I’m not just trying to get into the Cloud City to show that I can get in there. That’s asinine.”

“Then why?” Bennett said.

Nathaniel threw a look over to Bennett. “Let’s just say that I’ve run back into trouble back home. Certain people have contrived circumstances to make it look like I might be a double agent for West Andna. If I can bring back pure cobaltinium, I’ll be welcomed back with open arms.”

Bennett closed his eyes. Cobaltinium was the key ingredient for C-bombs. For a long moment, he felt sick to his stomach, nauseated with the thought of what East Andna could do with the C-bombs. Realistically, they probably wouldn’t actually do anything—it could be just another negotiation tactic in the ongoing civil war. But everyone knew that the cessation in fighting was temporary. They’d had a few years of fledging and tension-filled peace, talks of reunification that never went anywhere, but counting on peace was like counting on a drought to continue. Sooner or later, it would rain again. It was only a question of when.

A question of when the bombs would start dropping, when the mages would be forced into service, when countryman would be forced to kill countryman. Bennett was sick with it.

“All I have to do is get you into the Cloud City?” Bennett asked.

“Yes,” Nathaniel said. “Get me in, get me to the cobaltinium and get me back out.”

“That’s a lot more complicated than just getting you to the Cloud City.”

Nathaniel shrugged.

“What about my apparent abduction by an East Andnan allied citizen?” Bennett asked. “Surely, someone is going to put two and two together.”

“Please. I had to track you down. I already know that you run the shop under a false name,” Nathaniel said. “The watchmen from Little Vichou are out there looking for a Brian Kearns. And Regina here—” Nathaniel petted the car lovingly, “left them a little present with updated surveillance video. You shouldn’t make your system so easy to hack.”

Bennett closed his eyes. Undoubtably the footage would show the watchwoman attacking Bennett and Nathaniel without provocation. The watch wouldn’t raise anything to a national level until they sorted the situation out for themselves. Depending on how good the new footage was, it could take some time.

“I’d need an excuse to go back,” Bennett said. “I don’t have a lot of use these days. I can’t do magic and that was my sole purpose there. It’d look odd for me to just show up.”

“Are you saying that you haven’t been invited back to be retested? Surely, the mages must be holding out hope for your return.” Nathaniel said. Bennett looked down at his hands and tried not to think about the messages he’d received and summarily deleted from Head Mage Glenhorn. “It’s a simple question.” 

Bennett stared hard at the green and brown blurs going by. Assuming that Bennett could get the door to slide open, he could throw himself out of the car. He gave himself a decent chance of surviving the impact and he could maybe run into the forest. Hide out there and do…what exactly? Forage for food? Build a shelter? It was all laughable. And that was assuming that Nathaniel didn’t make good to kill his mother and sister.

Without warning, Nathaniel slowed the car suddenly and pulled off the road, managing to fit the car in between the surrounding trees until they were partially hidden. Almost certainly, the car’s exterior had changed to camouflage itself. Not thirty seconds later, two cars sped by, brown and blue striped. The watch. Probably trying to track Nathaniel down.

After five minutes, Nathaniel navigated the car out of the forest and back onto the road.

“It’s almost certainly changed since I’ve been there,” Bennett said.

“Probably,” Nathaniel acknowledged with equanimity.

They drove for several hours in silence, Bennett trying to will himself to remember every detail that he could about the Cloud City. He’d found a pad of paper and a pen in Nathaniel’s car and had been using that to take notes, despite Nathaniel’s offer of a smart pad. The last thing that Bennett needed was to spend hours writing everything down there and then lose it all when the air sparked with too much magic.

Bennett had spent many years of his life in the Cloud City. Almost from birth, he’d shown the ability to manipulate magic. Nothing too big or grandiose—no one expected a toddler to instinctively know how to kill someone with a word. But it’d been there nonetheless. He’d levitated some of his toys or made his stuffed animals parrot nonsense back to him. True child’s play.

His parents hadn’t had much hope of keeping it secret and sure enough, two of the King’s mages and half a squadron of soldiers had shown up on his parents’ doorstep when Bennett was four years old. He remembered that part of it vividly—the fear striking him, screaming for his mom and the guards holding his parents in place as they struggled for him.

From that point on, he’d lived in the dorms attached to the magical facilities in the Cloud City. The logic went that the mages were too rare a commodity to risk having them be housed in a place that their enemies could get to. It was no coincidence that their location in the Cloud City also made it exceptionally difficult to run away.

Bennett began sketching out a preliminary outline of what the Cloud City looked like starting with the circular floating island that it lay on. In the exact center lay the Magic Facilities, where the mages learned, practiced and even lived. Everyone would have preferred that the Magic Facilities and the Sciences Center, where the scientists worked, be as far away from each other as possible to eliminate risk of interference. Unfortunately, experience had made apparent that the Magic Facilities needed to be exactly centered in the city in order to achieve the best alignment for magical use. Magic was funny that way.

Connected to the Magic Facilities were the dormitories which housed all of the mages. Children were separated from adults and housed by age until they reached their majority. Bennett had spent fourteen years in the dormitory and hated each one. The dormitories had been not-so-affectionately referred to as the nightmare rooms.

The Magical Facilities and dorms were unlikely to have been changed in any material way—as every magic user knew, magic could be tricky at the best of times. Barring a catastrophe, no one would risk breaking something that currently worked.

On Bennett’s piece of paper, he noted that.

For everything else, he sketched out the rough outline of the large buildings and towers. Although their use might have changed, even the King probably hadn’t ordered them demolished. The King’s quarters lay at the northern most side of the city, adjoined on its east and west side by gardens. To the east, public gardens for any person in the Cloud City. To the west, the King’s private gardens. Bennett had never seen the private gardens, but he’d heard that they were sumptuous beyond all belief: exotic flowers and fruits hanging everywhere the eye could see, brilliantly-colored tame pets roaming the ground. Counterclockwise from the private gardens was the King’s treasury. Continuing in such direction, one would come to an army training yard, adjoined on the inside by an armory, and then the army dormitories.

Further on still, at the furthest point from the King’s castle, on the southern side of the city, rested the aviary hangar and the army’s landing strips where the military’s air ships came and went. Immediately counterclockwise rested the landing bay for all other traffic to and from the Cloud City, adjoined by a greenhouse. Counterclockwise from there was the area most likely to be pertinent to Nathaniel and unfortunately the area that Bennett knew the least about: the Sciences Center and yet another commissary.

Moving around the Cloud City was fairly easy—over time the rulers of Andna had built tunnels both above the city and through the ground of the city. The tunnels branched out like a gnarled set of interconnect trees, crisscrossing branches and looping around to meet each other. With the right set of credentials, one could go from the training yard to the Sciences Center in a brisk twenty minutes of walking.

If they needed to get into Material Center, they would need sufficiently good credentials to get them in. People were understandably wary about a mage walking around the Sciences Center, although mages weren’t prohibited from entering. If they went through the tunnels, while the mainframe software would log their entrance, they might be ignored long enough to get up to the precious metals vault.

“If I get you into the Sciences Center, you can handle the vault?” Bennett asked.

“Yes,” Nathaniel said. 

Bennett sighed. Even assuming Nathaniel could handle the Sciences Center, Bennett needed an ironclad reason for himself and Nathaniel, feared assassin of the north, to be going to Cloud City. A reason for their ship to take them to the landing bay and a reason for them to not be turned away at the landing bay, denied admission right off the bat.

Bennett rubbed his head, feeling the start of a headache forming. He thought about the testing.

“Relax,” Nathaniel said, as if he weren’t the one who’d threatened, then kidnapped, Bennett and put him in this position.

“Excuse me?” Bennett said.

“I said, that you should relax. You’re going to give yourself a headache,” Nathaniel said.

Bennett briefly thought about reaching over and strangling Nathaniel. Nathaniel would kill him as soon as Bennett had his hands around Nathaniel’s neck, but it would be a glorious death.

“I heard you the first time,” Bennett said. “I’m just impressed with the level of deliberate obtuseness that it takes to suggest that I should relax when my inability to relax is entirely your fault.”

Nathaniel smiled as he took that in. “At this moment in time, no one is in any danger. If you need something to think about, think about that. We’re on our way to one of the most beautiful cities on the continent and we’re driving though an awe-inspiring forest. Relax.”

“I hate you,” Bennett said. “For the first time in a long time, I wish that I had my magic back so that I could smite you where you are sitting.”

Nathaniel smiled even wider at that, his face handsome in the rising sun. “Relax, Keasey.”

The next thing that Bennett knew, Nathaniel was shaking him awake, his face pressed up against the window. Bennett sat upright at once, heat flooding his face as he surreptitiously tried to wipe at the damp patch at the right of his mouth. Bennett felt groggy and irritated, angry at himself for falling asleep. Nathaniel could have done—what? Bennett thought wryly. He could have threatened to kill the few people that Bennett cared about again? Robbed a bank?

With that thought in his head, Bennett felt a little less grumpy, although the cobwebs were still slow to clear from his brain and he sat up all the way and looked outside. The car sat parked on the side of a main street in a town only a little bigger than Little Vichou and they were outside of what looked like a very grimy noodle restaurant.

“We’re stopping for food?” Bennett asked.

“Are you objecting?” Nathaniel asked and his door slid open smoothly. Bennett’s stomach rumbled loudly and when Bennett looked down at his transmitter, he saw that it was already lunch time. He must have slept for a few hours.

Bennett’s side took a second longer to open, as if it was skeptical of letting Bennett out of the car. Bennett glared at it for good measure and, not reassuringly, it made a grating squeaking noise as it finished opening.

A woman with tawny-gold skin who looked about Bennett’s age sat at the counter when they came in, her face bored. “Welcome,” she drawled out.

Nathaniel walked up to the counter, Bennett trailing warily behind him. “Hey,” Nathaniel said, his voice warm. “How are you doing today?”

The woman perked up at that. “Slow morning,” she said. “We had a hoveball competition in here this weekend. We’re still picking up the pieces.”

“And recuperating,” Nathaniel said, winking at her.

“Don’t I know it,” she said. “Do you know what you guys would like?”

“We’ll take two specials,” Nathaniel said and Bennett wanted to protest—he didn’t even know what the specials were! “And can you point me in the direction of your owner?”

“Sure, he’s in the back,” the woman said. She frowned at Bennett as Nathaniel headed away. “You can grab a seat wherever,” she said, her voice noticeably less enthused. Bennett sighed.

After a few minutes, the woman brought out two bowls of steaming noodle soup, made with chopped assorted fresh vegetables in it. Bennett looked at it warily and then dug in—it had a hearty and delicious flavor to it. It was surprisingly good.

Halfway through the bowl, the noodles so perfectly chewy that Bennett thought he might compose a poem for this noodle shop, Nathaniel reappeared from the back and strolled out to where Bennett had seated himself, one bowl in front of him and one bowl waiting for Nathaniel.

“I need to see you back here,” Nathaniel said and grabbed ahold of Bennett’s arm.

“Wait,” Bennett said. “Can’t I finish that first?”

“You can finish it after,” Nathaniel said. “Helga will keep an eye on it, right?”

The woman at the counter who had, of course, perked back up, smiled back at Nathaniel. “Of course,” she—Helga—said.

The noodles would be soggy and the broth cold before he got back, but there didn’t seem much use in explaining that. He should have just been thankful that his kidnapper had deigned to feed him at all. Although, if Bennett were being truly honest with himself, the food was just a bonus on a stop necessary for some other reason. He’d been out of the game for a few years, but he wasn’t so far gone that he was stupid.

They walked through a door with a sign that read “STAFF ONLY”, passing a staff bathroom, a thin hallway that lead to the kitchen and front counter and then went into a small office where a man sat at a desk. The man was thin, his face awkwardly angular with a sharp chin and cheekbones, with skin that looked flushed pink in the light. He must have been in his early forties and he regarded Bennett suspiciously when Nathaniel brought him in.

“This is the one?” he asked Nathaniel. “He looks like a bit of nothing.”

“I know what he looks like,” Nathaniel said and all good humor was gone from his voice. “Give it to him.”

The man flung his hands up to the ceiling, as if they were fluttering doves trying to escape him. “Your grave.”

Nathaniel said nothing to that, his gaze intensely trained on the man instead as he pushed Bennett into a chair and rolled up one of Bennett’s sleeves. Bennett spared a thought to wonder if this man were an ideological ally of Nathaniel’s, some cleverly hidden East Andnan plant or sympathizer, or if he had been pressed into service like Bennett. They certainly did not seem like friends, although from what little Bennett knew of Nathaniel, he didn’t seem like the type to have many friends.

The man removed an implanter from the desk, holding its oblong plastic sides firmly. Bennett warily watched the man approach. The man typed something on the digital interface facing him and then put the cool, plastic surface against Bennett’s left bicep.

Bennett closed his eyes, pushing down on the nausea rising within him. If age made friends, he and the implanter should have been the best of them. But when he’d been a kid, they’d used the implanters at least every two weeks to put trackers in the kids, if they were lucky, and other things, if they weren’t. Bennett hadn’t been very lucky.

Bennett forced a smile onto his face for two people who probably didn’t care if he was fine with the situation. The man grunted and Bennett felt the searing pain of something pushed through his skin into his blood stream.

Belatedly, Bennett realized that instead of just implanting something in him, they could actually have drugged him. Bennett’s whole body went cold even as he tried to reassure himself that there was no reason that they could have. But maybe Nathaniel had been lying to him all along. It wasn’t like the East Andnan man wasn’t capable of it.

The man removed the implanter after a minute and Bennett automatically ran his fingers over the now reddened and raised skin. It would be back to normal within a few hours, but it felt tender and sore now.

“Thanks,” Nathaniel said. “Credits have been transferred.”

“At your service,” the man said, his tone mocking, and he saluted Nathaniel. “I’ve set the synthesizer to switch back in two days.”

Nathaniel went out the door, no glances behind him, trusting that Bennett would follow. Bennett nodded once at the man and then hurried after Nathaniel. Unsurprising, Nathaniel didn’t let Bennett finish off his food.

“Sorry, Helga, we’ve got to run,” Nathaniel said. “But we’ll stop in again soon.”

“See you!” Helga said, waving at them.

Only when they were in the car did Bennett decide to speak. “Who is that man and what did he implant in me?” Bennett said. “And why didn’t you tell me any of this beforehand?”

“You’re kind of on a need-to-know basis right now,” Nathaniel said. “Let’s face it. You’re helping only on the most tenuous of links right now. If we got caught in fifteen minutes, we’d both be better off the less that you know. Since it doesn’t matter anymore, that’s the former Dr. Lee. He now owns that place. I had a few favors that I could collect with him, so he’s temporarily changed your biomarkers. If it takes you longer than a few days to set up a return to the Cloud City, we’ll need to get it redone.”

“What!” Bennett said, outraged, “You had no right to do that!”

Nathaniel shot Bennett a derisive look. “You want every law enforcement officer on your tail the first time that we step into a building that automatically scans you? By now, a team has gone into your store and they’ve almost certainly got your biometrics either from your DNA in the store or on file. Maybe both. The footage should hold up for a while, but even if it does, they probably want to find you and talk to you. Most likely, they’re not putting it in the national database yet, but…” he took a deep breath, “We’re going to the Glass City. It’ll be hard enough to do what we need to without announcing our presence there.”

As much as Bennett wanted to protest, Nathaniel was right. His biomarkers could send out an alert to the watch if they had put out a call for him country-wide when he walked into half of the buildings in the Glass City. Damn it. Even if the police did view him as an abducted person, nothing good would come out of them knowing that he was there. And he wanted to avoid the chance that Brian Kearns could be matched up to Bennett Keasey. Then Cloud City would really be on guard, concerned about who was shooting at mages, even if they were now defunct and useless.

“Alright,” Bennett admitted. “You’re not wrong.”

“Of course I’m not wrong,” Nathaniel said, but he was smiling, so it felt almost like a win. “This isn’t my first international abduction.”

“That’s pretty worrisome,” Bennett said. “Not an encouraging statistic.”

“You don’t need encouraging statistics,” Nathaniel said. “If I gave you any, you would assume that I was lying, anyways.” That was fairly accurate. “I’ll tell you this though—all of the people that I promised would live through the experience, did in fact live through the experience.”

“You didn’t promise that I would live through the experience,” Bennett said.

“Oh, I haven’t?” Nathaniel said, and then smiled even wider at Bennett’s outraged expression until Bennett could only laugh.

“Can I know where we’re going next?” Bennett asked.

“Sure,” Nathaniel said. “There’s not much use pushing for the Glass City tonight—we’re almost eighteen hours out from the city, so we may as well find a place to stay overnight. We can go over the plans that you’ve put together for how you’re going to get me my cobaltinium.”

Bennett eyed the notebook that he’d started putting his thoughts in. “What if I really can’t get us in,” Bennett said.

“Then your family dies,” Nathaniel said and there was no forgiveness or room for doubt in his voice. Any brief sense of comradery disappeared. Nathaniel wasn’t a friend, he wasn’t an ally, he was the man who had kidnapped Bennett from his store and threatened to kill the only people that Bennett cared about. It would have been futile to get angry or upset. It certainly wouldn’t save Bennett’s family or himself. So, Bennett opened the notebook and forced himself to think. 

Nathaniel pulled off of the highway onto a small side road just as the sun started to set. They’d crossed the Vichou River and moved from the dense forest to the more sparsely wooded rolling hills that lined the route to the capital. There had been a few other cars on the road. Before the civil war, the route from the Matrea Territories in the south up past the city of Rothelock, crossing the Vichou and heading towards the Glass City had been a tourism highlight. It highlighted the beauty of Andna, tall rising trees, mountains to the east and sparkling views. Bennett had heard that it had been amazing to visit back before the war.

The car stopped in front of a small but beautiful hotel built into the side of the hill, its roof covered with shrubs and other greenery, blending right in. Nathaniel went to turn off the car and Bennett put his hand on Nathaniel’s arm.

“You should let me talk,” Bennett said. Nathaniel raised an eyebrow. “You sound like you’re from the east. If someone from the watch comes by and they recognize me, you don’t want them to figure out that I’m with someone who is from the other side.”

“Aren’t we all Andnans?” Nathaniel said, his voice hard. “Isn’t that what your king is always saying?”

Bennett opened his mouth and floundered. “Well, yes,” he said choosing his words slowly, “but—but, you will stand out. And I don’t think that you want to right now. Don’t you have your own enemies in East Andna? You shouldn’t want this getting out for that reason as well, right?”

“You could use this opportunity to try and get a message to your authorities,” Nathaniel pointed out.

“I could but I feel pretty confident that your threat against my family wasn’t an idle one. You could have implanted nano-detonators in their blood.”

“That doesn’t even exist!” Nathaniel said. “That only happens in movies.”

“You never know!” Bennett said. Most technology was fundamentally foreign to him. He could appreciate it, especially from a distance, but he would never be fluent in it or know the reality of living in it.

“If either side had managed to finally create that devastating piece of tech, the war would be over,” Nathaniel said. “Really over.”

“That’s reassuring,” Bennett said. “But even knowing that you can’t do that, you can rest assured that I’m still scared enough to not go and run in there screaming that an East Andnan rebel has kidnapped me.”

“Because you know that I would also shoot you immediately.”

“Because I know that you would also shoot me immediately,” Bennett said. “Can we go inside now?”

The glass entrance slid pleasingly open for them, revealing a warmly lit entrance and a woman with her back to them as she tapped something into an interface on the back wall. Plants grew throughout the room, rising through the floor, and to the right of the entrance lay a comfortable seating area with plush couches and chairs. It would have been a nice place to stay—if one wasn’t in the position of being kidnapped.

When the woman turned and saw them, she smiled and a glass desk rose from the ground in front of her, a digital interface on top. “Welcome,” she said warmly. “How can I help you.”

“We’re looking for a room,” Bennett said. “We’re traveling for work and were held up this morning, so we didn’t make it as far as we had hoped.”

“I hate when that happens,” the woman said. She looked down at the interface and smiled. “We have two rooms available. One bed or two?”

Nathaniel looked pointedly at Bennett. “I think that we would prefer one room with two beds. Would that work?”

“Of course,” the woman said, still smiling. “May I request that you press your hand against the screen for identification.”

Bennett looked at Nathaniel nervously but Nathaniel had already placed his hand on the screen. “Vincent Langley” showed up onscreen, marking him as a resident from Hampner to the west. Bennett placed his hand on the screen and a “Ferdinand Morin” showed up, also residing in Hampner.

“You’ve got a bit more of a drive,” the woman said. “But I hope that you’ll enjoy your rest tonight.”

The woman directed them to the elevators. When the elevator opened onto their floor, the hallway stretched amongst a long floor of rooms. Their host walked out in from of them towards their room, informing them that the walls between each room were made of inert material for complete privacy.

“We want guests to feel at ease here,” she said. “The windows are tinted from the outside, but you will have a beautiful view of the countryside from inside your room.”

She stopped in front of a door labelled 3F and unlocked it with her hand. “Please let me know if you need anything.”

She didn’t seem to find it odd that neither Bennett nor Nathaniel had baggage to bring in and once they were through the door, Bennett was sure he wasn’t imagining Nathaniel’s relief at closing the door behind them.

“Vincent,” Bennett said. “It has a certain ring to it.” 

“Ha ha,” Nathaniel said. “Let’s order some food and then go through what you have already.”

It would have been wrong to say that Bennett was touched that Nathaniel was making sure that they had dinner. If Bennett passed out due to hunger, it wouldn’t be good for either one of them. But he was _grateful_ if nothing else that Nathaniel was making sure that their food needs were met.

Bennett took out his notebook and spread it open to the diagram that he’d made of the Cloud City. “A day isn’t a lot of time to come up with a foolproof plan, but,” he said and then held up a hand to interrupt the objection that Nathaniel was going to make, “But, I have come up with the start of one. Let’s first go through the layout of Cloud City itself.”

As it turned out Nathaniel already knew a fair amount about the layout of Cloud City—he had a rough idea about general sections of the city. He’d clearly been shown a map by someone who had probably lived there once. Most likely the pretender to the Andnan throne and leader of East Andna had provided his knowledge, although a significant amount of the military had defected to East Andna as well. But, the leader of East Andna would have the most intimate knowledge—growing up as the younger prince of the royal family tended to breed extreme familiarity with the city.

But the areas that Nathaniel was most familiar with were the royal areas—his knowledge was sparse and often wrong with respect to the Magical Facilities or the Sciences Center.

“No one has thought of a better name for either one?” Nathaniel asked, making a face. “They sound like a type of trash removal service and processing center.

“Moving on,” Bennett said, “As you’ve so helpfully already noted, the easiest way in with be if I get a mage credential. That will have the smallest amount of scrutiny to get through the landing bay and into the Cloud City. I will need to message the Head Mage requesting testing. I can say that you are my…assistant. We’ll need to sneak into the Sciences Center, ideally without setting off any alerts to the guards and have answers prepared to questions about why we’re there.

“I’ve been thinking about the implanter—I don’t understand how it works or even if you’ll be able to get one that we can stand up to what we need, but if we can bring one with us, potentially duplicating two guards’ biomarkers, then we could probably get in without setting off a flurry of alerts and a welcome reception. We would…probably have to incapacitate the guards or else the system will quickly wonder why there are two of guard so-and-so walking around. We’d need to do it in the Magical Facilities since the magic interferes with the system and the normal software won’t really be monitoring them or reporting that there’s anything weird like two of those people running around.

“And then we break into the Sciences Center, you steal the cobaltinium and then I’ll be ritually disemboweled for treason,” Bennett said, looking up at the ceiling of the room like it could possibly provide guidance.

“Ok,” Nathaniel said.

“Ok?” Bennett said. “This is an asinine plan. This is barely half-baked and requires so many illegal things. You could have thought up something this stupid on your own.”

“Maybe,” Nathaniel said. “I have thought up a lot of stupid plans in my life. But none of them have killed me. And I don’t think that this one will either.” With that, he winked at Bennett, who felt outraged beyond limit.

“This is a horrible plan!”

“Right now, this is the outline of a plan,” Nathaniel said. “It’s a start—we’ll refine it from there.”

They spent the next few hours brainstorming additional details—what contacts Nathaniel had in the Glass City, who might be able to get them the tech they needed. Nathaniel easily fell into the role of a general planning for his troops and it was somewhat comforting to be back in the role of ancillary staff. Bennett had spent most of his life training to support military action and this felt like a military mission, even if it was against the city that he was once sworn to protect.

“Is this what you did when you were in the army?” Bennett asked

“Sometimes,” Nathaniel said, stretching out on the bed. He’d abandoned his jacket a while back and was now wearing only a thin shirt, which rode up exposing a pale strip of skin. He twisted his back and Bennett watched the muscles in his back ripple through the motion. “Most of my missions were solo missions, planned and directed by yours truly. Once I was fully trained, I was given a large latitude of autonomy. Probably because I handled direction so poorly and had fairly good success.”

“When were you conscripted?” Bennett asked and tried to do the math. “You’re not so much older than me.”

“I wasn’t conscripted,” Nathaniel said. “East Andnans chose to fight. We saw your king for what he really is. I was twelve when the war really broke out—it’d been mainly skirmishes and posturing for a few years. But that’s when the King tried to bomb Setcache. You had to be sixteen to join up, so I trained on my own.”

Bennett didn’t say anything. What could he say? The King was the King. Good or bad, he was the head of Andna. To think otherwise was treason. He could no more envision a world without the King or his heir on the throne of Andna than he could imagine that the sky could disappear.

“No response to that?” Nathaniel asked.

“What do you want me to say?” Bennett said, abruptly annoyed with the conversation. “I’ve already agreed to break the law and help you. I’m committing treason for it. I could be killed in a hundred horrible ways, many of which I’m intimately aware of. But he is still my King.”

“You know,” Nathaniel said conversationally, “my parents worked in the Bivonan mines. My parents tried to hide what they had to do from us. Parents always do—they didn’t want to scare us. They wanted to give us the best chance that we had. They had no chances or choices and worked in those mines until they died when I was ten.”

The Bivonan mines had yielded some of the largest reserves of triurium, a crucial metal for almost all tech, especially nanotech. It was also one of the most dangerous mines in the world—automatons couldn’t function at the depths where the triurium was found. Cave-ins, suffocation and other horrible accidents were a way of life. The King refused to close the mines—they were too profitable. Only when East Andna had started the war had the mines closed since they were east of the Andnan mountains.

“Well, the war is over,” Bennett said and forced his mind to skip past his own lack of free determination. He’d perfected the trick a long time ago—one had to in order to continue on. “They’ve decommissioned all mandatory conscription programs.” When the ceasefire had come, the King had ended the mage conscription as well—Bennett had almost wept when he found out that others wouldn’t have to go through his experience. When he’d been younger and angrier, he'd vowed to himself that if they didn’t stop mandatory conscription of mage-children, he would—but it didn’t matter. It was now irrelevant.

“You’re an idiot if you think that the war is over,” Nathaniel said. “And your King would never willingly decommission a program that’s as valuable as the Bivonan mines. Or any of the other valuable conscriptions. Like your own.”

“I didn’t say that the mage program was done—but they’ve stopped the mandatory aspect of it,” Bennett said. “If they hadn’t, I can’t imagine that there would have been a ceasefire. Now it’s just a mage training facility. Mages are integral to more than just military action.”

“Maybe your king is just biding his time,” Nathaniel said.

“Why are you asking me anything if you know all the answers?” Bennett said.

There didn’t seem to be anything else to say after that—neither one of them were in a very good mood and Bennett was tired. Even if the shock of being kidnapped, threatened and shot at hadn’t been enough for him, Bennett had never been all that great at holding a conversation. Probably what happened when one’s formative years had been spent so singularly focused and with a very limited peer group.

As he lay down to go to sleep, Bennett thought about Nathaniel’s childhood. Maybe Bennett didn’t have that much to complain about for his own.

In the morning, they both rose early, neither one of them speaking much as they navigated the bathroom and steam shower.

Nathaniel went downstairs first and Bennett tried not to feel gratified by the small amount of freedom and discretion that he was being given. It wasn’t exactly like Bennett was a high flight risk—he wouldn’t get very far on foot. But even knowing that, it was nice.

A few other people milled about in the far side of the lobby where a table with a spread of breakfast foods had been placed and several tables set up for guests to eat at.

“Our other young traveler,” the hostess said excitedly when Bennett emerged into the room, immediately drawing him into conversation. “How did you sleep? Are you enjoying the hotel?”

“Er,” Bennett said, looking around for Nathaniel. “Very well. It’s a beautiful hotel.”

“I’m so glad to hear that,” she said. “And now you’re off to Hampner?”

“Yes,” Bennett said.

“What do you do in Hampner?” she asked.

Before Bennett could try and come up with a neutral answer that would warrant no further questions, Nathaniel appeared by his side.

“Ferdinand, we’ve only got a couple more minutes before we’ve got to get on the road. Come grab breakfast,” he said, one hand on Bennett’s elbow as if he would lead him over to one of the tables.”

“Yes!” the woman said. “Please grab some breakfast before you head out. And let me know if you need anything before you leave.”

“Of course,” Nathaniel said, his smile charming, as he then motioned Bennett over to the table.

Bennett’s heart beat rapidly in his chest. “Thanks,” he said. “Thank you for that.”

“Not a problem,” Nathaniel said dismissively. “Although I was completely serious about grabbing food now. We do need to head out in a few minutes.”

Bennett took that as the dismissal that it was and went over to the spread. It was actually a nice spread—smoked fishes, cheeses, jams, fresh bread, a few pastries, cold bean pudding and fried dough. In the middle of helping himself to the food, he froze, the last few minutes replaying itself.

When he got back to the table, he squinted at Nathaniel. “You changed your accent,” he said accusingly.

“I hope that you don’t think that I’m generally successful at my job just on my looks,” Nathaniel said and then, of all things, winked at Bennett.

“Why did you let me talk last night then?” Bennett asked, half-outrage and half-embarrassment. He’d made the offer—why hadn’t Nathaniel said anything?

“It was kind of gallant,” Nathaniel said. “I didn’t want you to feel unappreciated.”

“What?” Bennett said. “That makes no sense.”

“Eat your food,” Nathaniel said.

They spent most of the day driving, talking through Bennett’s plan. There were not many other reasonable ways for them to get onto Cloud City. If they tried to commandeer an air ship, they’d be shot down well before getting close. Nathaniel asked if it would be better to go as two non-magic users who had a reason to be in the Sciences Center.

“The system will recognize me as a mage pretty quickly,” Bennett said. “Even if we change my identity, we can’t suppress the fact that my blood will all but shout ‘MAGIC USER HERE’.”

“Even though you can no longer use magic?” Nathaniel asked.

“I no longer have the ability to meaningfully do magic, but if everything around me lined up perfectly and I focused my entire being, I could possibly pull a small amount of energy to do something as big as move a leaf a very short distance. Nothing that’s useful in any capacity, but enough to still be recognized.”

Nathaniel thought this over. “Ok, so I’ll be your assistant. Aren’t you lucky?”

Bennett laughed and then sobered. “Have you ever done it before? Gotten into the Cloud City?”

“No,” Nathaniel admitted. Since the King’s younger brother had tried to overthrow the King, backed by the East Andnan nobles and people, the two halves of Andna hadn’t met at the Cloud City. He’d been young when the uprising at started Setcache, spreading across East Andna until it was halted at the Andnan mountain range.

Almost all of Bennett’s memories were of the two countries at war, fighting mainly in and aerially above the Andnan mountain range until one reached the Matrea territories. While West Andna should have had the upper hand due to their wealth and mages, Prince Grayson was known as an excellent military tactician.

Throughout the war, Prince Grayson had made overtures to reconciliation but King Carlton had not found any of the proposals and their terms acceptable. It was well known that East Andna desperately wanted peace—the war had been extremely costly in East Andnan life—but not at the expense of giving up the rights that they had fought for.

With the plan decided, Nathaniel wanted Bennett to immediately message Head Mage Glenhorn. But every cell of his being seemed to riot in protest as he thought about opening up his transmitter and typing out a note.

When he’d first left Cloud City, Bennett had ignored all messages from the mages completely. He’d been still coming off of galenite euthimun and had been apathetic about almost everything except finally getting off that cursed rock.

Only after a year had passed and Bennett firmly entrenched in Little Vichou did Bennett’s curiosity finally get the better of him and finally open the messages up. The messages had been to the point, direct, optimistic. They wanted Bennett to come back in and doing testing. Maybe everything hadn’t been lost, the messages had said. Maybe it would return.

Each message came once a month, always on the same date. Steeling himself, Bennett pulled up the last one. Taking a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves, he typed out a response. “I think that some of my ability to conduct magic may be returning. I would like to come and do a preliminary test. I’ll be in the Glass City with my assistant tomorrow, let me know if that will work on your end,” he read out loud to Nathaniel.

Nathaniel shook his head. “In three days,” he said.

“What happens in three days?” Bennett asked.

“The King will be giving a speech. It will provide a bit of a distraction for us.”

“You know a lot about what’s going on up there,” Bennett said.

Nathaniel shrugged. “Or I pay attention to information. My job is to know what is happening in West Andna. Right now, my life depends on the success of this mission.” He wasn’t exactly wrong.

The sun just began setting when they crested a hill and saw the Glass City in the distance, the miles and miles of sprouting glass gleaming red, orange and yellow in the late afternoon, a prism and riot of color in one. Bennett’s heart leapt at the beauty of it.

He let his gaze shift upward to the rock that held their ultimate destination. It hung over the city, ominous to Bennett’s sight. Even in the setting sun, it looked dark. It was too high up and too far away to make out anything individually, but Bennett knew it well enough that his mind was more than happy to fill in the details. Facing them would be the edge of the landing bay and the aviary training. Behind it, rising up like a behemoth was the Magical Facilities. He couldn’t see the King’s castle, but it was there too, on the other side.

He'd promised himself that he would never go back. In his wilder moments, when the war was fresh in his mind, he swore that he would kill himself or let himself be killed rather than do it. But here, in the true light of day, his ideals had seemed to disappear rather quickly. Bennett would have felt embarrassed if the desire to turn and run from the Cloud City hadn’t taken over his brain.

“Home sweet home,” Bennett said, trying to instill himself with false cheer. He would fake it until he made it. There was no other alternative.

“Is that the only other place you’ve lived?” Nathaniel asked.

“For almost as long as I can remember,” Bennett said.

“And they never let you off the rock,” Nathaniel said.

“I mean, for missions or training exercises. Occasionally we were rewarded with a trip into the Glass City.”

“And you’re still fighting for the man who did this to you,” Nathaniel said.

“I’m not doing any fighting now,” Bennett said and his tone was harsh enough that Nathaniel looked at him in surprise, his eyebrows rising. “And I will not do any fighting.”

“If everything goes according to plan, you won’t need to,” Nathaniel said. “We all know how well plans turn out.” At Bennett’s sharp look, he held up a hand. “I’ve said that you won’t need to fight and I mean it. Besides, I think you trying to fight would be even more of a problem for me than you standing there while I did the dirty work.”

And wasn’t that the truth.

They got into the Glass City just as the final curtain of night descended and all of the buildings lit up, in synchrony, a glowing festival of light. From a distance, the city seemed to resemble a colorful large bouquet of flowers. Only when they got close did the bouquet turn into places where people lived and worked.

It felt familiar as they drove in, momentarily driving next to the bullet train arriving from the south. For a brief moment, they were in tandem and then the silver train shot past them, disappearing into the bowels of the city. In a few minutes, they were in the limits of the city themselves, shorter and squatter glass apartment buildings with their glass tinted dark for privacy soon gave way to the larger, more prestigious glass buildings winding up towards the sky.

Nathaniel seemed to have some understanding of Bennett’s feelings because he didn’t say anything as they drove through the city, Bennett’s mind subconsciously comparing to when he’d left for any noticeable differences.

They drove to a large building, parking in the structure underneath. There were plenty of other cars around, people coming to and from the central elevator bank, and Bennett nervously ran his hands over his hair as if that would somehow shroud his identity or hide him if Nathaniel’s doctor had messed up the biomarkers, but no one gave them a second look.

They got out on the 23rd floor to a row of gentle lights illuminating the hallway. All the glass was opaque and tinted, so Bennett couldn’t see what any of the doors led to. Halfway down the hall, Nathaniel stopped and knocked on the door. It opened slowly to an older woman who looked at them quizzically.

“Vincent,” Nathaniel said, holding his hand out. “Vincent Langley. I’m here for the physical.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” the woman said and welcomed them in, closing the door firmly behind them, leaving them in a comfortable looking room set up for waiting. A thick rug lay on the floor and there were two blue couches arranged at right angles next to the window. A desk sat in the back, a flat pad interface for use with a door behind it leading to a more clinical looking room where the doctor probably saw patients. The woman waited a moment and then spoke again. “I had expected you earlier.” Nathaniel shrugged enigmatically.

“Let’s start with the standard procedure,” the woman said and Nathaniel stepped into an open stance and gestured for Bennett to do the same. The woman took out a detector and went over Bennett first. Unsurprising, there was nothing.

For Nathaniel, it clicked immediately at Nathaniel’s jacket and shirt. “Off,” the woman said impatiently. Nathaniel shucked off his jacket, then shirt, revealing a broad chest thick with hard-worked muscles. The detector clicked again over Nathaniel’s pants. Nathaniel stripped those and his shoes off without asking, leaving him standing in boxer-briefs as if he had no care in the world. Built as he was, perhaps he didn’t.

Bennett felt his face go warm and he averted his eyes, looking up at the ceiling. When he had regained some sense of equilibrium, he looked over to see Nathaniel dropping his clothing into a portable null box, giving Bennett another look at Nathaniel’s well-defined back. Bennett looked back up at the ceiling.

“Well, Vincent,” the woman said. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for an IAS grade four bio-implanter,” Nathaniel said. “I need any biomarkers implanted to be seamless and undetectable.”

The woman’s eyebrows raised. “That’ll be expensive, even at cost.”

“I’ll pay,” Nathaniel said. “I also need some sleeper drugs. They need to be pretty long-lasting.”

The woman nodded. “I can have those for you tonight. A bio-implanter like one that you’re looking for will take some time.”

“I need it in two days,” Nathaniel said. “And I need it to be kept absolutely quiet. I’ll make sure that you’re compensated for it.”

The woman thought it over. “Five hundred thousand,” she said and Bennett’s mouth dropped open. He’d never seen that much money in his entire life.

Nathaniel took out his transmitter and pressed the interface a few times. “Done,” he said.

The woman nodded down at her screen. “Where should I have it delivered to?”

Nathaniel reeled off an address that meant nothing to Bennett. The woman just smiled and then headed back into her office. She rummaged around for a few minutes while Bennett just looked at Nathaniel in complete shock. He could have used that money for almost anything. He could have fed a town for a month on that amount of money.

And that apparently seemed to be the end of the meeting—the woman came out and handed a bunch of sleeper drugs to Nathaniel and then the two of them shook hands. The woman shook hands with Bennett despite his complete lack of involvement in the conversation up until that point and then they were on their way.

When they were back in the car, Bennett whistled. “Five hundred thousand units?” he said. “That is insane. I could buy a small city for that amount.”

Nathaniel laughed. “You clearly haven’t seen how expensive most small cities are.”

“Where did you get that kind of money?” Bennett asked.

“Does it really matter?” Nathaniel asked.

“I guess not,” Bennett said. “But I feel like you should have at least bargained with her. On principle!”

“Do you know how much your mage materials cost?” Nathaniel asked. It wasn’t accusatory, just curious.

“Um,” Bennett said. “I don’t. But I know what my lease at the pharmacy costs and what it costs for my goods. And I know that compared to that, you’ve just spent a royal’s ransom.”

“If I bring back cobaltinium, it’ll be worth that amount multiplied by a thousand,” Nathaniel said. “And I can tell you that the mages go through at least ten million credits of materials a year. Maybe even a month.”

For the second time, Bennett’s mouth dropped open. It was a good thing that they were no longer at war—costs like that seemed like they would bankrupt the country.

According to Nathaniel, they still had to run a few errands, but since they had several days to get them done, Nathaniel drove them to a hotel instead. This hotel was in an anonymous-looking building, but it looked nice enough once they got inside.

This time, Bennett let Nathaniel handle everything and when they got up to their room, Bennett immediately lay down on the bed, just to let his body relax from a day stuck in a car and yet still stress-filled.

When he woke up, all the lights were out and Bennett was disoriented and groggy, panic flooding his mind at the unfamiliar settings. Bennett reached out and groped around him, trying to find something to center himself—and his heart leapt into his chest when a light suddenly went on, Nathaniel’s face just a few feet away, sitting up and holding a gun as he looked around the room.

It all came back to Bennett and his body went hot with embarrassment. “Sorry,” Bennett mumbled. “I just wasn’t sure—I didn’t know where I was.”

Nathaniel’s gun went back under his pillow (wasn’t that a bad idea?), but he shook his head like it had been no bother to him.

“Not a problem,” Nathaniel said and then yawned. “I’m going to go back to bed, but feel free to take a shower—they’ve even got a full bath here—if you want to clean up.”

“Oh,” Bennett said and tried to squash down an urge of thankfulness. “Thank you.” Sleep didn’t seem like it would be soon in coming, so Bennett did take advantage of the bath. He lay in the bath until he almost fell asleep in the pleasantly warm water and then roused himself enough to make it to bed, where he fell back asleep much more easily than he would have expected.

After their morning breakfast, Nathaniel announced that they were going to go shopping. Bennett assumed for clothing or maybe materials. Not even close. Bennett should have expected it and yet he was still surprised when they walked into a small market stall displaying knives, his eyebrows going wide enough to make Nathaniel laugh at him.

The gun stall was located in a market that took up the five middle floors of a building that looked calm and collected from the outside.

“I’ve never been to this area before,” Bennett said after they parked underneath the building.

Nathaniel laughed. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “This doesn’t seem like the kind of area that they’d want a sheltered young and valuable mage walking around in.” With that ominous statement, Bennett was apprehensive as they got into one of the many elevators to take them upstairs.

He drew back when they exited the elevator on the fifth floor as it opened to a large market made up of packed stalls, loud hawking and more people than Bennett had seen in years. The sight of all the people, the sight of such roughness shocked Bennett. Everywhere he looked there was chaos. Each stall had scrolling fabric advertising their wares and it was too many colors, too many sounds, too many things to read at once. “We’re going in there?” Bennett said and then took another step back.

“Yes,” Nathaniel said, his brows drawing together and a look of confusion on his face. He looked back out at the crowd and then at Bennett. Bennett steeled himself together—it was just the surprise of it all, he told himself. It was normal to be overwhelmed when something was unfamiliar.

“Are you--?” Nathaniel started and then cut himself off. He looked at Bennett again, meeting Bennett’s eyes deliberately, and then he reached down and gently placed his hand on Bennett’s back, the angle leaving his mouth at Bennett’s ear. “We’ll be in and out quickly,” he said and his voice had a soothing quality, as if Bennett were an animal that needed to be gentled. “I know the owner of the stall really well—you’re in good hands here. He’s got an area in the back that’s quieter and secluded. We’ll be able to conduct our business there.”

All the while Nathaniel spoke, he pushed Bennett through the crowd, managing to split the crowd seamlessly, so that it felt like the crowd parted before they were even upon them.

“I’m fine,” Bennett got out eventually even though his elevated pulse marked him as a liar.

“Never said that you weren’t,” Nathaniel said.

By the time that they arrived at the stall, with a long table set out in front with assorted s-knives, Bennett was almost feeling embarrassed by his reaction. “Is this it?” he asked. He peered around the table—it curved around and ended at a door, closed, behind which the owner presumably stocked the more valuable supplies.

“It appears so,” Nathaniel said and moved his hand away, waving instead to the young man sitting behind the table.

“Hi Reginald,” Nathaniel said. “Is the boss around?”

“Hey Vince,” Reginald said, smiling easily, his whole face turning up. “Let me check if she’s here. You’ll watch the knives?”

“On my honor,” Nathaniel said as Reginald stood up, cracked his back, and then disappeared behind the door.

“Do we really need weapons?” Bennett asked once they’d stepped inside the comparatively spacious confines of the stall. He didn’t go far from Nathaniel—there wasn’t that far to go even if he’d wanted to—but being out of the crowd was a huge relief.

“You yourself noted that our plan is an unshielded wire just waiting for a spark to completely burn down. When it does, we’ll both be much happier if we have guns,” Nathaniel said. “And knives. And maybe some remote detonators.”

“I will not feel better if we have any of those,” Bennett said.

“Well, I’ll feel better,” Nathaniel said. “And that’s what really matters here.” But he smiled at Bennett as he said it, which lessened the sting of it.

Bennett examined the s-knives on the table while they waited. Some of them were tiny, delicate things, as thin as butterfly wings. Others were large and thick. “What should I look for in a knife?” Bennett asked.

Nathaniel gave him an appraising look. “Well, what are you looking for the knife to do? Is it for self-defense? Will you try to use it to cut someone’s throat while they sleep? Is it meant to intimidate or be subtle?”

Bennett shrugged. “Let’s go with self-defense.”

Nathaniel leaned down and pointed at a few of the knives, starting first with talking about their handles, moving on to how they opened and then to the shape of the blade. Bennett took it all in, fascinated and horrified at Nathaniel’s casual discussion of how to inflict damage.

When Reginald eventually came back out, he held open the door. “Head on back there. Boss is waiting for you, Vince.”

“Thanks,” Nathaniel said. “Let’s head back there,” he directed to Bennett and Bennett followed, eager to get into a quieter place.

The back room was bigger than Bennett expected, opening up to an area almost three times the size of the front stall space. Large, closed cases were stacked neatly around the room and, at the back of the room, a woman with glasses stood with a large screen transmitter in front of him. It was quiet enough to fully think again and Bennett took a deep breath of relief.

“Vince,” the woman said warmly. “It’s been a while.”

Nathaniel stepped forward and greeted the woman with a hug. “Dominique,” he said. “It’s been too long and it’s good to see you.” He gestured to Bennett. “This is my friend, Ferdinand.”

“What are you doing hanging around this mess?” Dominique said, giving Bennett a hug as well that Bennett felt particularly unequipped to deal with. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You as well,” Bennett said, trying to go for a casual tone, as if he’d spent any part of his life around guns.

“What do you need today?” Dominique asked. “I’ve just got in a sweet shipment of trackers.” Bennett’s eyes went wide, despite his attempt to appear relaxed. Trackers were very illegal on the open market—the guns would emit a small burst of nanoseekers who would hone in on a target and then detonate.

“We need something a little more subtle and quiet. Those things are for people who want to make a splash,” Nathaniel said. “But otherwise I would be all over those. Let’s get two standard guns, no biolocks. We’ll also need ammo…”

“Just two guns?” Dominique asked. “You’re losing your touch.”

“I’m just getting started. We’ll need a few remote detonators, smoke bombs—but good ones, not like that junk you got me last time,” Nathaniel said, making Dominique laugh. Nathaniel continued on down the list, reeling off names of technology that Nathaniel had only heard of in passing. Occasionally, Dominique would go to one of the boxes and lightly pressing it, his biomarker presumably unlocking it, and taking out some gun or another which she would show to Nathaniel.

“We’ll take two of the Velotech 480s,” Nathaniel said. Bennett didn’t even know what a velotech was, much the less the version 480 of it. He felt incompetent—on a mission that he didn’t even want to be on! That he’d been forced onto. He’d give his left foot, his right foot, almost anything to be back at his house in Little Vichou, sipping tea as the sun set.

“That’ll be it?” Dominique asked.

“Yes,” Nathaniel said.

They left Dominique’s stall a little while later, Nathaniel carrying what looked like a heavy, locked box, which Dominique had carefully placed all of their new weapons and ammunition. At one point, he’d asked Bennett if he wanted to check anything out on the guns, like the grip or sightlines. Bennett had almost laughed as he’d declined.

When they got back in the elevator to take them down to the garage, a couple stepped in as well—a man and woman about Bennett’s age, both of them smiling at Nathaniel and Bennett. Bennett nodded politely at them and tried not to count down the minutes until they could be back in the relative quiet of their hotel.

As soon as the doors closed and the elevator started dropping, the couple both pulled out guns and knives. Moving faster than Bennett could track, the woman had one arm around Bennett’s throat, a knife carefully pressed against his carotid artery as the elevator slammed to a stop.

Nathaniel had two guns drawn as well, the box dropped onto the floor, one gun trained on each of the man and the woman.

“We just want the box,” the woman said. Her non-knife wielding hand held a gun also pointed at Nathaniel. The knife dug in deeper, drawing Bennett’s attention back to it, and he forced himself to remain unmoving, despite the pain of it. “Give it to us and we let your friend live.”

“Maybe I don’t care that much about him,” Nathaniel said, his voice light and casual, as if they were talking about the weather.

“Well, there’s one of you and two of us, so even with your not-friend’s throat slit, that still puts us at pretty favorable odds,” the man said.

Bennett drew in a careful breath and Nathaniel seemed to track it with his eyes.

“Fair enough,” he said and he pushed the box over towards the man.

“Smart move,” the man said. “We’ll release him when the elevator gets to the second floor. You will stay in the elevator until it opens in the lobby. Understand?”

Nathaniel nodded his head slowly. “I understand.”

The man, still keeping his guns trained on Nathaniel, reached back with his elbow to press something on the elevator wall. Smoothly, the elevator started moving again, speeding up briefly and then slowing back down as they presumably approached the second floor.

The elevators opened to a darkened floor—it looked unused—and the man pocketed one of his guns and started pulling the box back. The woman holding Bennett began easing back as well, forcing Bennett to move or risk being cut up. He expected her to release him when she approached the threshold, but instead, she pulled him back with a strength that caught Bennett off-guard and the elevator doors started closing.

“On second thought, perhaps we’ll see what more we can get from your not-friend,” the man said.

Before Bennett could process the man’s words, two shots were fired, both the man’s and the woman’s heads flew back, the knife pressing in even tighter before falling to the ground along with what remained of the woman. Nathaniel strode through the elevator doors, now open again, and Bennett kept his gaze trained on him instead of the dead bodies around him.

“Amateurs,” Nathaniel said disgustedly. “Are you ok?”

“Yes,” Bennett said automatically and then actually thought about his answer. He was surprisingly ok. Shaken, but fine. “I guess this isn’t the place that they would take a young and sheltered mage.”

“You seemed a lot more concerned when I had you in the same position.”

“I knew that you would handle it—handle them.” And it was true. He’d been scared, but he hadn’t thought it was going to die. Because Nathaniel would take care of the problem. And wasn’t that a weird feeling. Well, Nathaniel would take care of the problem because he needed Bennett to get him up to the Glass City. Unsurprising really, when looked at it from that angle.

Nathaniel raised an eyebrow at that. “That’s a lot of faith to have in me.”

“Well, you need to get up to the Glass City. So far, I’m your best bet. If my throat gets slit or they try to get fancy with some ransom, your chance of success goes down,” Bennett said.

Nathaniel laughed at that. “You’ve got it all figured out. Pragmatic to the last.” He then stepped close into Bennett’s space, his gaze focused on Bennett. His eyebrows drew together, concerned, and Bennett watched him warily, his heart beating fast in his chest.

“You’re bleeding,” Nathaniel said and he reached into one of his pockets and then unwrapped a skin patch. Bennett found himself almost holding his breach and trying to think about anything but Nathaniel, and the hint of spice and sweat on him, as Nathaniel carefully steadied Bennett’s neck, looking at the cut once more.

“I think that this should be sufficient,” Nathaniel said and put the patch on Bennett’s neck with a great deal more delicateness than he’d showed when he’d fixed himself up.

There was a quick moment of pain as the patch began to work but then it was gone. “High pain tolerance,” Nathaniel said after a moment. Clearly, he’d expected more of a reaction from Bennett.

Bennett could have offered any number of reasons why he had a high pain tolerance, but instead he shrugged. “Or maybe you’ve got a low one,” he said. “It’s ok if it’s too painful for you,” he tried to keep his face serious and concerned.

Nathaniel bristled at that, as expected. “My pain tolerance is just fine, thank you very much,” he said and Bennett kept his lips firmly pressed his lips together to keep from laughing.

“Absolutely,” he said, just about patronizing as he could sound.

“I was shot at earlier,” Nathaniel said, “did you hear me complaining.”

“You took it magnificently,” Bennett said.

“I’m going to show you a high pain tolerance,” Nathaniel said, almost growling, but he was laughing too and if Bennett resolutely did not look down, he could almost feel like everything was alright. He tried not to think about how the two people below him had been alive a few minutes ago—their blood pumping, organs moving, an arm pressed around him. His life had been traded for theirs—it didn’t seem like a worthwhile trade. But he couldn’t make himself feel bad about living at their cost.

“Come on,” Nathaniel said. He threw another look down to the floor and rolled his eyes as he picked up their box of weapons. “What idiots. We’re going out another way.”

Nathaniel must have been feeling in an apologetic mood because after they dropped off the weapons in their hotel room, Nathaniel immediately secreting the weapons somewhere hidden, he took them to lunch at a small restaurant.

The adrenaline caught up to Bennett in the hotel room and Bennett sat down heavily on his bed, feeling the s-knife sharpen and press into his throat again. “Come on,” Nathaniel said softly, sitting down next to Bennett. “Let’s go get something to eat.

Bennett felt like he was understandably wary of leaving the hotel room. “You might get threatened every day, but that is not what most of my days are like,” he said.

“You said it yourself,” Nathaniel said. “You trusted that I would get you out of it in one piece. And I did.”

“But let’s not tempt fate,” Bennett said. “I didn’t particularly enjoy the slicing of my neck.”

“People like that are going to hang around areas where people have something that they want—money, drugs, weapons, tech. Nowhere that I’m going to take you for lunch is going to have that risk.”

“I didn’t think that the risk was all that great in the Glass City!”

“Well, when you’re going to a black market, shopping for guns, I’m not sure what other risks that you would expect,” Nathaniel said. At Bennett’s mutinous look, he held out his hands. “Come on, I’m hungry. You’re hungry. Let’s go get some food.”

Bennett gave in and perhaps as a concession to Bennett’s jumpiness (very reasonable jumpiness), Nathaniel took them to a restaurant that was practically empty on one of the top floors of a building in their neighborhood. The food was quite good—just comfort food really, warm steaming soup that filled Bennett up—but Bennett ate heartily and felt almost relaxed by the time that they finished.

They made conversation about nothing in particular as they ate and in different circumstances, Bennett could see himself wanting to intentionally be in Nathaniel’s presence. He was confident, smart and had a dry sense of humor. He was also pretty nice to look at, although he knew that and wasn’t afraid to use it.

Bennett wondered what Nathaniel thought of him. Did Nathaniel hate him? How could he not? While Bennett worked up the courage to ask, his transmitter buzzed and he pulled it out, scanning through the message from Head Mage Glenhorn.

“They want me to come in for testing,” Bennett said slowly. Nathaniel’s attention was focused solely on him. “They said that my day will work—two days from now.”

“I told you,” Nathaniel said, smiling as his whole face lit up, and even his smug expression made him look handsome. “We’re in. Make sure that you set the testing time after 1 p.m. The King’s speech is at 11 a.m.—we will take an early shuttle out there and we’ll be in and out before anyone thinks to look for us, arriving at your lessons right on time.”

Nathaniel had promised that once he was on site, he could inject a virus into the system that would cause security protocols on the precious metals vault to be disregarded. He would incapacitate the guards with sleepers, getting in and out. It sounded flimsy and uncertain to Bennett. Their hopes and dreams resting on the ability of tech to go right. But he’d agreed to throw his lot in with Nathaniel’s, even if Bennett could barely see a way out of it.

Bennett nodded, his stomach unsettled, and he’d started to sweat under his shirt. It would be fine, he told himself. “Great,” he said, trying to muster up as much good cheer as he could.

The next day, Nathaniel took Bennett shopping for new clothing. “Something that actually protects you,” Nathaniel said. “Not whatever this is.” He gestured at Bennett’s clothing.

Bennett tried to tell him that it wasn’t really going to work. He and tech did not get along. But Nathaniel would not take “no” for an answer. What followed was a horrible day of trying on a million different shirts, jackets and pants, with various levels of tech embedded. It was a nightmare—little shocks of electricity as the tech malfunctioned, the horrible feeling of wrongness to have the tech so close to his skin. Bennett almost wished that he was back being help hostage over a box of guns.

They ended up with a shirt with just a pinch of nanotech used—it wouldn’t be all that helpful at stopping someone from stabbing him, for example, but it would blunt the damage. Jackets had been a complete bust, each of them seeming to prefer self-destruction to Bennett, and they’d had to pay damage costs on multiple jackets as shopkeepers glared at them.

“I guess it’s better than nothing,” Nathaniel said. Bennett felt mistrustful of his new shirt and wasn’t sure that he agreed.

Bennett felt more and more restless as the day went on. Nathaniel checked Bennett’s biomarkers in the late afternoon and was pleased to report that he was back to showing up as himself.

“Great,” Bennett said, feeling like it was anything but. He almost wished that he could stay Ferdinand Morin forever.

By the time that they took dinner in their room, Bennett couldn’t sit still for more than a minute or two before he needed to stand up and move around.

“Stop,” Nathaniel said from over on his bed. Bennett stilled for a moment and tried to stop himself from moving. It wasn’t very successful. Nathaniel sighed and stood up from the bed coming over to where Bennett sat in a chair looking out into the Glass City. He placed a hand on Bennett’s left leg, forcing it to stop moving.

“You’re going to be fine. Everything is going to be fine. You get me into the Sciences Center and I will have the cobaltinium out of there faster than you could ever guess.”

“I know,” Bennett said. “If anyone could do it, you could. It’s just…” he looked out the window again. He didn’t want to go back to the Cloud City. He wanted to be back in Little Vichou so badly.

Nathaniel placed a hand over Bennett’s. “Stop,” he said. “Hold on one second.” He stood up and went and rooted in the closet, coming back with one of the guns that they’d picked up.

“You’re going to take this tomorrow,” he said.

“I don’t think that’s a great idea,” Bennett said.

“This one has minimal tech—less chance of it jamming on you. It’s better to have it and not need it than the other way around.”

Bennett looked at the gun, looked at Nathaniel and then sighed and lay back against the chair, some of the tension leaving his body.

“I don’t want to go back there,” he said.

“I know,” Nathaniel said. “But we all do things that we don’t like. In a day you’ll be done with this and with me.”

And that was startling—it had only been a few days since Nathaniel had taken Bennett. For five days, he’d had purpose and someone to talk with, make jokes with. Would Bennett just go back to Little Vichou when he was done? Would Bennett even be alive when this was done?

The next morning, they took the city rail through the Glass City, gleaming with the golden sunrise, to the air port. The air port lay on the far edge of the city, a hangar that stretched for miles where airships were docked, loading and unloading their cargo, be it human or otherwise. 

When the city rail stopped, its metal doors shining in the early sun, Nathaniel and Bennett disembarked along with a host of other people. It was early enough that most people were subdued, talking quietly when they spoke to their companions, and no one looked at Nathaniel or Bennett twice.

Bennett had been through the Glass City port many many times—it was almost always how he had gotten to the Cloud City or left the Cloud City. But he’d always been with a group of people—senior mages, military personnel or guards. Never with just one person.

“This feels weird,” Bennett said. “I didn’t think that I would ever—no, I hoped that I wouldn’t come back here. If I’m being honest, I always knew that something would drag me back one day—I just assumed it would be due to an even more forceful invitation.”

“It’s weird for me too,” Nathaniel said. “I’m essentially going into the worst place in the world for me and East Andnans.”

And he was right—as bad as it was for Bennett to be going back, he could be relatively certain of his welcome if he really was trying to integrate back into the fold. That would not be the case if anyone figured out who Nathaniel really was.

“Mainly though, I’m excited,” Nathaniel said and his face lit up. Bennett sighed. Of course. Certain death to an assassin was just an enticing feature of a mission. Complete fear for Bennett, complete enjoyment for Nathaniel. “I’m so close to getting what I need to go home.”

They took a sonic shuttle out to their assigned docking area and found a sleek ship waiting for them, trim lines and angles everywhere they looked.

Nathaniel whistled. “Wow, they pulled out all the stops for you.”

“They’re just trying to show me how good that I could have it if I came back,” Bennett said and then he thought back to what it had been like as a King’s mage. The curious blankness of his teenage years came back to him—the blankness upon killing someone, yet another someone, and feeling no regret, pain or fear. Only the triumph and satisfaction of completing a step or finishing a job.

The main thing that he felt under the carefully administered medication was hunger. The hunger to be the best. It had lashed within him as he stood at on yet another battle field along the East Andnan mountains, raining down lightning and fire upon a rebel hideout. There had been no thought to any of the lives that he had ended that day. It was only days later, when the galenite euthimun worked its way out of his system, that he felt anything at all. For a brief period, he would weep in his room, distraught at what he had done, the people that he had killed. But then he’d receive another injection of galenite euthimun and the process began all over again.

Thank god the war was over.

“And this doesn’t tempt you?” Nathaniel asked. Bennett would rather die than live like he had.

“Would it tempt you?” Bennett said in response.

“Absolutely not.”

“Then you have your answer,” Bennett said. “Why do you think that I live in Little Vichou?”

Nathaniel looked at him and tilted his head after a few seconds. For no reason that Bennett could explain, the air felt weighted between them. As if Bennett’s question had posed more than intended.

Yet again, Bennett wondered what Nathaniel thought of him—Bennett had done so much damage in the fight against East Andna. Killing, destroying and aiding others doing those things. Bennett repressed a shudder.

“It’s beautiful view?” Nathaniel said eventually, responding to Bennett’s rhetorical question, but the joke felt flat between them. At that, the sound of a door decompressing jerked Bennett’s attention to the ship as the door fully opened and a short and squat woman came out, looking at both of them.

“Mage Keasey?” she asked.

Bennett nodded. “This is my assistant, Mr. Langley.”

“Very good,” she said. “I’m Thea, the first mate of our small ship here. I’ll need to confirm your identities before we go on board.”

Bennett’s mouth went dry as he thought about what might happen if Nathaniel’s markers were anything other than perfect. “Of—of course,” he said and held out his arm. Thea pulled out a biotester, small, gold and luxurious looking. They definitely got their fair share of elite travelers on this ship.

Thea pressed the biotester against Bennett’s palm and checked the readout. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Keasey.”

Nathaniel was next and he casually held out his hand, even as Bennett’s heart practically beat out of his chest.

Thea smiled. “It’s wonderful to have you on board as well, Mr. Langley. Please, if you’ll both come with me, we’ll get you seated and then can take off. It’s only an hour journey up to the Cloud City.”

Inside, they met the captain, a slightly taller version of the first mate—apparently, they were sisters—who instructed them through the safety procedures. Both Bennett and Nathaniel had been on more airships than most, but Bennett forced himself to follow along in order to take his mind off of what was going to occur in short order.

All too soon, they took off, the captain heading into the cockpit, the doors closing with a snick and the first mate smiling at them. “What brought you down to the Glass City?” Thea asked. She clearly assumed that he was based in the Cloud City.

At a look from Nathaniel, Bennett played along ambiguously enough that he knew how she would interpret it. “Just visiting for a few days really.”

“I love the Glass City myself,” Thea said. “I was born out in the wilds of Andna and I still remember my first time coming to the city. My eyes were wide enough to swallow the moon!”

Bennett nodded weakly, his stomach beginning to roil with dread as they moved up in the air.

The higher they got, the more nauseated Bennett became until he excused himself and went to find the bathroom. The bathroom was small but kitted out in full measure with a large toilet, a small fabric-covered block that could be sat on and then a sink situated below an intricate gold-framed mirror. Bennett looked at himself in the mirror—his face looked drawn tight, his eyes almost bloodshot against his dark skin. He wanted to throw something into the mirror, smash it with his fist, break it until nothing was there.

His blood knew what it was moving towards—the magic calling to him—so concentrated and potent in the Cloud City. He felt alive—more alive than he’d been in a long time—and it sickened him. For one long moment, he thought about pulling out the gun that Nathaniel had given him for emergencies and ending it right here. Ending it before he could do something that he couldn’t take back.

A light knock came at the door and Bennett opened it cautiously, all of his senses relaxing when he saw that it was just Nathaniel.

“Can I come in?” Nathaniel said.

Bennett nodded and opened up the door, allowing Nathaniel to walk through. Nathaniel sat down on the small block, one foot balancing to keep himself from tipping over.

“You alright?” Nathaniel asked.

Bennett shrugged. He would be fine.

“You’re going to be fine,” Nathaniel said. “And I said that you would get out—I always keep my word.”

“You’ll have to forgive me if the word of someone once sworn to kill me doesn’t reassure me,” Bennett said dryly, but his stomach settled minutely.

Nathaniel grinned. “I guess I’ll just have to look forward to saying ‘I told you so.’”

“We can both look forward to it,” Bennett said. Neither one of them said anything for a few minutes, but Bennett’s stomach felt a little easier with Nathaniel there. Bennett wasn’t sure if he actually believed Nathaniel or he just wanted to believe Nathaniel, but either way, some part of him did think that maybe they would get through this.

After a while, Nathaniel spoke. “Are you good to come back? Any longer in here and the first mate is going to think that I’m more than your assistant.”

Bennett was confused for a long second before he got Nathaniel’s meaning loud and clear and his face went warm with the implication.

“Really, you will be fine,” Nathaniel said, his face serious, and he gently pressed one of his hands to Bennett’s right shoulder for a long second in reassurance, before he was gone back out the door, presumably to charm Thea.

Bennett gave himself another few minutes before he followed Nathaniel out. He let Nathaniel make small talk on rest of the way up, Bennett feeling the Cloud City get closer and closer.

“It’s a gorgeous view today,” Thea said, smiling as she looked out of the window. She handed Nathaniel a glass of water. Bennett had waved off her offer—not wanting to appear rude but not wanting to have anything at all in his stomach.

The window looked out over the Glass City, fully lit up with the morning sun, and gave them an excellent view of the Jero basin in which the Glass City lay.

“It is beautiful,” Bennett said, his heart in his throat. They were almost there, he could feel the heavy pull of magic tethering him to the city—and then they shot up, coming level with the Cloud City.

Thea was saying something—something about the Cloud City—but Bennett couldn’t hear her, could only hear the sound of the straps creaking around when he was shocked through, the wailing of children in the night, the utter quiet in Bennett’s brain after his last fateful mission.

Bennett could have stayed trapped in the memories of the Cloud City forever if Nathaniel’s hand, warm and alive, not dead yet, gripped Bennett’s shoulder firmly. And Bennett shamelessly leaned into it, taking courage from it.

Once the air ship docked, the door opened and a tall, thin man with a thick greying mustache boarded. “Welcome to the Cloud City,” he said, smiling. “It is an honor to meet you, Mage Keasey, and Mr. Langley. Can I verify your biomarkers?”

Bennett didn’t say anything, expecting Nathaniel to speak up. When he didn’t, Bennett chanced a look over to Nathaniel who had raised his eyebrow as if to say ‘What are you waiting for?’ And, of course, Bennett would be expected to be the one in charge—presumably if Nathaniel was actually the assistant of Mage Keasey.

“Absolutely,” Bennett said more confidently than he felt. They had fooled the ship’s biotester, but Cloud City’s should be even higher quality.

The man scanned Bennett’s hand, his identification quickly coming up. “Perfect,” the man said. “Now Mr. Langley, if you wouldn’t mind?”

Nathaniel held out his hand and the man lay the biotester on top. After a moment, it beeped and the man looked closer at it and frowned, Bennett’s heart leaping into his throat. “Apologies, Mr. Langley, can I take it again?”

Nathaniel kept his hand extended and the man ran the biotester again. After a heart-pounding few seconds, the man smiled down at the machine. “Excellent—of course. Welcome to Andna City. I assume that you know the way to the Magical Facilities?” Bennett nodded once and then the man moved aside to let them pass.

Bennett stepped off the ship, taking the boarding ramp down to the ground, Nathaniel behind him, and the inspector on their heels. Bennett’s first step onto what had been his home for the vast majority of his life.

While the Glass City was all sleek and colorful buildings, echoing the sunlight or mimicking the starlight, straight lines everywhere one looked, the Cloud City was the opposite. It had been built hundreds of years ago and the dense concentration of magic on it meant that there had never been a good reason to change the inert building blocks of the city.

Buildings made of dark stone stood everywhere that Bennett looked, each looking like it was hunched over, their curves all funneling towards the Magical Facilities as the center of the city. To the left lay the aviary, and army dormitory, pilots out in the distance walking to and from their gleaming metal air birds—the modernity jarring with the bulky dormitory building behind them.

Straight ahead of them rested winding streets descending into the “city”. There were a few small buildings scattered between each of the campuses and large buildings, mostly government offices, with the occasional apothecary or shop. Behind them rose the imposing tower that comprised the main portion of the Magical Facilities. Bennett forced his eyes away and looked to their right, where they would head to get to the Sciences Center after a quick detour until they were out of the sight of anyone who might be watching.

“Mage Visaya, what good luck you have,” the man said excitedly behind them. Bennett whipped around to see an older woman that he hadn’t seen in years. Bennett knew with alarming certainty what was going to happen next— _no_ , he whispered to himself. _Please let us go unnoticed_. But there was no justice or fairness in the world. “You’ve returned just in time to see what I hear is one of our special guests for the day.”

The woman looked over at Bennett and her mouth dropped. “Mage Keasey, it is a surprise.”

“Mage Visaya,” Bennett said, smiling as casually as he could. “What a wonderful surprise.”

“Come, I’ll walk back with you to the Magical Facilities,” she said. “I heard that you were coming in today, but I had passed it off as rumor. It didn’t seem especially likely.”

“You’re not the only one that thought that,” Bennett said, smiling more widely even as the bile rose up in his throat. “But I am very glad to be here now.”

“You were one of our best and brightest,” the woman said. “Sadly, no replacement has arisen to take your place.”

Bennett felt a dull sense of relief at that. At Nathaniel’s look, Bennett inclined his head in the direction of the Magical Facilities. “Shall we?”

There was an odd déjà vu to walking the streets of the Cloud City—but Bennett pushed all contemplation from his mind to focus on the present. They’d worked through this ahead of time. If they needed to head directly to the Magical Facilities, they could instead use the underground tunnels to get over to the Sciences Center. Even more likely that no one would see them since most people didn’t have occasion to go between the two buildings. As far a backup plans went, it was relatively good. But their one chance to arrive relatively unwitnessed had passed them by and Bennett was already regretting it.

When they arrived at the Magical Facilities, Mage Visaya took them in through the front doors. “Great,” Bennett said—he’d spent most of the walk over trying to think about how to lose Mage Visaya and figured that this was as good of a shot as any. “It was wonderful to see you—and I’m sure I’ll see you again today before we leave.”

“Absolutely,” Mage Visaya, dimpling at Bennett. Bennett started to head towards the stairs, which would take them down into the experimental magic floor—from there, they could access another staircase which would drop them straight into the tunnels.

“Aren’t you going to the see the Head Mage?” she asked. “Wrong way,” she said it laughingly and Bennett laughed as well and rolled his eyes, in on the joke.

“It really has been a long time. I would like to ask for a map of the Magical Facilities, but we both know that won’t be coming,” he said and Mage Visaya burst out laughing. “Luckily, our appointment with the Head Mage isn’t for a bit, so we’ll probably roam around and say hi until then.”

“If you need help, I’m just over here on the first floor.” Great—that meant that if they tried to come back around and use the stairs, they risked running right back into her. Absolutely wonderful. New change of plans. They’d go through the back side of the Magical Facilities, where another set of stairs led down to the tunnels.

“Thank you, I appreciate it,” Bennett said. Mage Visaya was watching them, so he waved and started heading in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, that was also the route he would take if he was going to see the Head Mage—unwillingly, the old fear and dread rose sharply in his stomach, even though he knew that he had hours before he was due to see the Head Mage.

Nathaniel raised his eyebrows once they got out of earshot. “From what I remember of the many diagrams that you drew, this seems to not be either the Sciences Center or the direction to go to the Sciences Center.”

“Well, she works on just the other side of the entrance. So would you like us to go in that direction and hope that she doesn’t see you? Do you want to get stuck in a half-hour long conversation?”

“I am ecstatic to be going in this direction,” Nathaniel said.

The hallways of the Magical Facilities were narrow and short, as the Magical Facilities were one of the oldest buildings in the Cloud City. It had once been the stronghold of the city, magic utilized to protect Andna’s kings and queens. Here, of all places, the magic was dense, almost tangible, and Bennett could feel whispers of it curling around his wrists and face, welcoming him home.

 _I’m not home_ , he tried to tell the magic, as if that made any difference.

They ran into a few people that Bennett had known in his previous life—and he was friendly but pressed for time, he explained to each of them. Nathaniel was a bland and yet comforting presence by his side.

Eventually, they reached the end of the testing wing and came to a fork. On the right would be the hallway leading to the Head Mage’s offices. On the left, where Bennett turned, was the library as well as the magical artifacts rooms.

“This way,” Bennett said and picked up his pace. Nathaniel was right behind him. He walked faster and faster until he was almost at a jog, when he heard the sound of steps coming down the hallway. They just needed to reach a— “Here!” Bennett hissed and reached out an arm to throw open a door that Bennett knew would lead to a set of stairs.

Bennett could feel that the door was warded, but he had enough force to push through it, his will against the door’s. For one long moment, he wasn’t sure if the door would sound an alarm, but it whisked closed behind them, silent.

Bennett pushed Nathaniel to the side, so that the door would hide them if it were opened, and trapped him there against the wall. Hopefully, no one would be the wiser about either one of them. “We’re not supposed to be in this area, so we cannot be seen. Or heard.”

Nathaniel nodded and neither one of them moved for a minute as the steps came closer and then faded away.

Bennett looked around once they were in the clear—it wasn’t exactly going in the direction that they wanted to, but they could take it down to the basement and then get where they needed from there.

“Come on, let’s head down here,” Bennett said. “We can take this to the basement—no one uses it anymore and we can get to the tunnels from there.”

“Great,” Nathaniel said. “The sooner the better.” He looked around the staircase that they were in. Mage-lights were positioned every few feet, but even so, the shadows made everything hard to see. “This place seriously creeps me out.”

“Yeah, it has that effect on most people,” Bennett said. “Such a large concentration of magic and magic users.”

“But not you,” Nathaniel said.

“At least not for the reasons that you think,” Bennett said and Nathaniel smiled at that.

At the bottom of the stairs, there was another warded door—this one warded much more strongly than the other door. Bennett considered making his final stand here—just letting the chips fall where they may. But even as he looked at the ward, tracing the intricate structure, the careful cuts that one would have to make in order to both get through the ward and not break the ward, he knew that he’d come this far. With a sigh, Bennett reached forward, sifting through the mass of magic in front of him, and delicately pushed through.

The magic obeyed his wishes and the doorknob turned slowly in Bennett’s hand. Bennett opened the door just enough to let Nathaniel in, and then himself, and gently closed the door when he was done—the magic settling back into place like it had never been disturbed.

It was dark in the basement—the darkness of a place that does not receive any sunlight and has never received any sunlight. It smelled damp and musty, like the whole wing had been forgotten in someone’s closet, and when Bennett took a breath, he couldn’t help but inhale some dust.

In silent agreement, the two of them waited until they were sure that no one had followed them or heard them enter. Bennett used that to let his eyes adjust—there was some ambient light coming through the doors at the far end of the room and the shadows lightened after a minute. He could see that they were in an old-style working room. This would have been one of the original functions of the Magical Facilities, one of its earliest uses: a place to work the raw ingredients to assist in the practice of magic. The long smooth table over there would have been used to manually work ingredients. There was a drying press in the back area and a large mortar and pestle almost half the size of Bennett to their left.

“I’ve never been in here,” Bennett whispered eventually.

“I don’t think anyone’s been in here in a long time,” Nathaniel whispered back. “Are we good to move?”

“Yes,” Bennett said and he headed through the room, kicking up little bits of dust that caught the light for a moment, shining briefly, before moving back through the air.

The magic felt potent here—even more so than the areas of the Magical Facilities that they’d come from—and Bennett took note of it. When they reached the door, he waited a second to make sure that no one was coming and then cautiously pushed it open revealing a long hallway.

“Do you think anyone is on this floor?” Nathaniel asked.

Bennett shook his head. “This is an old part of the facilities. I don’t think it’s in use currently—which is a shame. Someone could work some heavy magic here.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” Nathaniel said.

“Maybe.”

“I think that someone must come down here occasionally,” Nathaniel said as they stepped into the hallway. Here the magic was too heavy to reliably use technology for lighting, so a series of mage-lights were lit on the hall. “Why else go to the trouble of lighting it?”

Bennett shrugged. Perhaps—but what would it be used for? After the war had ended, with the mages’ ranks depleted and no conscription to bolster it, the group had pulled back on their spaces. He couldn’t see why they would have needed to use this area.

They headed down the hallway, going to their left, which would lead to the tunnels.

“It’s getting cleaner,” Nathaniel noted as they kept walking. “We need to be careful.”

“I suggest you stop talking then,” Bennett said, feeling annoyed.

No sooner had Bennett spoken then Nathaniel’s eyes went wide and he gestured frantically. _Fuck_ , Bennett thought. He couldn’t hear it yet, but he had no doubt what Nathaniel was trying to convey. Bennett looked desperately around—he couldn’t be certain which direction the sound was coming from and even if they sprinted, there was no guarantee that they’d make it in time.

Nathaniel grabbed his shirt and pulled hard, at the same time, pushing the door knob of one of the rooms lining the hallway. Bennett prepared himself to break the ward, but it was unlocked and Nathaniel and Bennett tumbled into the room, Nathaniel closing the door so softly, it barely registered as a sound.

The room that they found themselves in was lit—two raised beds in the center of it, straps on each side, and spaced several feet apart from it. Looking at them, Bennett found himself going numb, almost pleasantly so, as the rational part of his mind seemed to detach itself and rise to the forefront.

 _Yes, these are familiar_ , his mind said. It casually flashed the experience through Bennett of when he’d been five, old enough to begin full training, and sent to begin the first of many magic bolstering lessons. One of the mages had carefully helped him onto the bed. Another two had carefully tightened the straps to keep him largely immobile while allowing his hands to move.

Mage Glenhorn had smiled benevolently at him. “I hear that you have been performing very well in your classes,” he said. As a mage-in-training, Bennett attended magic classes alongside his other studies with the other children in the Magic Facilities.

“Thank you, sir,” Bennett said, still unsure what he had been brought there for.

“I would like you to try and conjure one of your toys,” Mage Glenhorn said. Conjuring a known item from a known location was one of the easier introductory-level magic that children were taught.

Bennett had been scared, not wanting to disappoint an important mage like Mage Glenhorn, but he smiled waveringly and then began to chant. He imagined the silky soft fur of the toy bear, then the way that it felt to wrap his arms around. He could almost feel it in in his hands. After a minute or so, a small stuffed animal appeared, clutched tightly in his right hand.

“Very good,” Mage Glenhorn said, smiling. “Now, I would like you to conjure your pillow.”

Bennett knew his pillow, could picture it, but he couldn’t feel it as easily. He tried, he really did, but nothing came.

“Try again,” Mage Glenhorn said, his face more serious.

Bennett felt scared again, but he did it, chanting and trying as hard as he possibly could, trying to move it with his will. After a minute, Mage Glenhorn frowned. “I see that we’ll need to try something else. Bennett, you must understand that we do this for your benefit—to make sure that you are learning as much as you need to and that your skills are properly developing.”

Bennett shivered, but nodded.

“Try again,” Mage Glenhorn said.

This time when Bennett started speaking, one of the other mages touched him gently and an unending lightning-white stream of pain shot through him, burning up everything within him. Bennett screamed, begging to stop, but Mage Glenhorn stared at him unflinchingly.

“Conjure the pillow,” Mage Glenhorn said, “and the pain stops.”

Bennett desperately imagined the pillow and pulled with everything that he had, feeling something stretch apart within him, an unknown muscle, as he reached for his own magic. Suddenly, his pillow popped into existence and the pain stopped. Bennett sobbed with the force of it.

“Good,” Mage Glenhorn said. “I knew that you could do it. Let’s move on.”

“Unused medical equipment?” Nathaniel asked quietly, looking at the bed and rooms. “Do you think that this is just storage?”

Bennett flipped up one of the straps, letting his fingers run up the smooth leather. The experimental mage program was over—it had ended. The war had called for extreme measures and so extreme measures had been taken to create the most powerful generation of King’s mages.

But this room was too clean. Too clean to be unused.

With a stillness in his mind, Bennett walked to the door, Nathaniel hissing behind him to stop moving or Bennett would risk alerting someone to their location. Bennett ignored him. He walked out into the hallway and closed his eyes and let his magic passively feel the area. It snarled out like a web, searching, bringing back and Bennett followed the trail it left him.

“What are you doing?” Nathaniel said, his voice urgent and he started pulling out one of his guns as he looked down the hallway, but Bennett couldn’t think about that as he kept moving.

His magic led him to a room further down the hallway, door warded and locked, but it was no match for Bennett.

“I think that someone heard us,” Nathaniel said and he practically pushed Bennett into the mage-lit room. “I need you to be quiet and get out your gun.”

Bennett ignored him and looked around the room. It looked like a physician’s office—brown glossy wood cabinets, a bed and chair for sitting, a countertop and sink. There, on the countertop, lay several syringes, caps still on, next to several jars of solution already prepped to be drawn from.

Galenite euthimun.

He’d been lying to himself this entire time. Nathaniel had been right. The King would never end a program that yielded such powerful results, no matter the human or emotional cost.

Nathaniel said something at him to stay silent—to stop moving—even as Nathaniel readied himself opposite the door, hidden until someone burst in. His face was determined—no trace of panic—solely intent and focus.

Bennett picked up the jars of galenite euthimun and looked at them. It was curious—he felt almost the same blankness that the galenite euthimun had once given him. It had pushed out all empathy and compassion and replaced it with a mindless drive to achieve his goals, to succeed at what directions he was given. Now his focus tailored around his sparking anger, curling around him like the flames of a fire. Bennett wanted to roar. He wanted to rage.

He threw the jars against the ground, the glass breaking into small pieces and the liquid spreading across the floor, coating the bottom of his shoes. Nathaniel swore.

A man burst in through the door, gun drawn, but Nathaniel struck him with precision no more than a second after his entrance, and the man dropped to the ground, blood spilling out from his head onto the floor.

“We need to move, now,” Nathaniel said. He opened the door a hair to see the hallway, his gun out, and swore again. He started to shoot down the hallway and Bennett could hear returning fire.

Bennett knelt down near the dead man and placed all five fingers of his right hand into the blood, feeling the life energy of the man surrounding him. He sensed another man and woman running down the hall, coming closer in order to kill Bennett and Nathaniel.

There was a choice in front of him—he had promised himself that he would never kill again, that he would rather die than deprive someone of his life. He’d also promised himself that he would never use magic again—but he’d broken that promise when they’d come down here.

He’d known, somewhere that he didn’t want to think about, that it would end up like this. They had molded him to kill and he’d been the best at it.

Nathaniel was still cursing in front of him and Bennett thought about everyone that they would use this room on. Children who would be tortured again in the name of the King.

Within him rose a white lightning storm, power swirling fast, a whirlpool connecting him and the power within the dead man’s blood. Bennett reached for it, the words of power to be spoken coming to him, and lightning arched between him, through the floor, seeking its targets. With a strangled gasp, the two guards found their windpipes blocked, and they struggled to breath. After a minute, their bodies went limp, falling unconscious and then Bennett released them, their breaths coming shallow but still there.

When Bennett looked up, Nathaniel was staring at him, his face unreadable.

“You can do magic,” Nathaniel said.

“Yes,” Bennett said.

“You said that you didn’t do it anymore.”

“I didn’t use magic anymore,” Bennett said. “And I hoped that I would never do it again. It didn’t seem relevant.”

“You didn’t think that you still retaining the ability to do magic was relevant to a mission that involved us being in the most magical-concentrated place in Andna?” Nathaniel was angry now—pissed—his whole demeanor barely contained, like he had to hold himself back from attacking Bennett.

“I am at my strongest and most powerful when I use blood as a grounding tool,” Bennett said, feeling his own anger rise to the surface, subsuming the blankness. “I don’t do that anymore. I won’t do it anymore. Think about what was done in order to make me at my most powerful during the war. They never told me where the blood came from, but I can imagine it pretty well! Would you want to continue that?” Bennett looked around the room and gestured at the countertop. “They’re doing it all over again. They’re torturing kids. They’re injecting them with galenite euthimun. They’re doing it all over again!”

Nathaniel didn’t say anything to that. Bennett would have expected him to get angry—another reason to be scared of West Andna, another reason to fight back. But he didn’t. Nathaniel had known.

“They never stopped,” Bennett said.

Nathaniel blinked a few times. “Of course not. They just hid it,” Nathaniel said. “The war didn’t end. Not for anyone who knew better. And you clearly didn’t. Yes, the King said that it ended, because if he hadn’t, West Andna would have revolted. He just got smarter about the war that he was waging.”

Bennett felt his anger burning something away in him—maybe the last vestige of his dreams—and Nathaniel’s eyes flicked down to Bennett’s hand. Bennett looked down to see a shimmer of energy coming off his hand. He pulled his anger back, restrained himself, and the charged air faded away.

“Look, I need to do what I came here for,” Nathaniel said. “If you can’t help me, then you should stay here.”

“No,” Bennett said. “I’ll help.”

Nathaniel grimaced at the man on the floor and then the guards outside. “We need to get everyone hidden and things cleaned up before someone else comes down here. They’ll figure it out quickly enough—if the mainframe hasn’t picked up on their changes in health status already.”

“The mainframe doesn’t work in here—at least not very well,” Bennett said. “It’ll ignore the odd inputs that it’s receiving. At least for some time.” 

Nathaniel looked around the room. “We can’t store anything in here—none of the cabinets are big enough. We’ll need to do it in the other room.” He bent to pick up the dead man but Bennett waved him off and began chanting, the man’s body lifting itself off the ground. Nathaniel eyed Bennett warily.

They cautiously walked into the hallway, and then Bennett lifted the two other guards as well, Nathaniel opening the door to the first room and showing Bennett where the people could go. For the dead body, the left it in the cabinet under the sink in the room, despite its more cramped conditions. For the two unconscious guards, Nathaniel pulled out a pair of smart-ties to bind their ankles and tie their hands behind their backs. He then pulled out some gags—where did he keep all of these things?—which bound themselves over the guards’ mouths. 

Bennett and Nathaniel then placed the two in the larger closets in the back, taking out the assorted equipment to make room.

“How long will they be out for?” Nathaniel asked.

Bennett shrugged.

“I’m going to give them a dose of a sleeper—it’ll keep them knocked out for at least a few more hours. I could do longer but…” But the risk would be that they would die. Even Bennett knew that.

“That’s fine. I can get us to the Sciences Center quickly. Although I can’t promise that there won’t be collateral damage.”

“Let’s aim for unobtrusiveness.”

They crept through the basement hall, mage-light flickering, and all optimism felt stripped away. Bennett thought about what was happening in the dormitories nearby—there would be another crop of young students, their families carefully disposed of or paid off to ensure that there would be no public knowledge.

A small group of young children with strong abilities. Them being led down to the basement, strapped into the beds, tortured. Instructed to do terrible things in the name of the King. And then, when deemed necessary, galenite euthimun administered to ensure that independent thought wouldn’t enter into it.

Bennett wrapped his hand around Nathaniel’s arm and Nathaniel immediately came to a stop, his face turned towards Bennett.

“The King is the cancer,” Bennett said quietly. “This is all due to the King and his need for more money, more power. If he hadn’t put those demands on the people of East Andna—if he had listened to everyone who said that it needed to change, we wouldn’t have had a war in the first place. We’ve reached a tentative peace, but it’s not enough for him. He’s always grabbing for more.” He took a deep breath and let the thought roll through him. “I know that you coerced me into coming here so you could get the cobaltinium for tech bombs. But we need to end this war where it started. If the King is dead, the military will stand down—there’s too much support for the prince—and your prince can rejoin the two countries. No tech bombs needed.”

Nathaniel’s face went white. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” he said. “Yes, you’re not wrong about King Carlton but you’re not prepared for what you’ll need to do to kill him.”

“I don’t care,” Bennett said. “If I end up dying, it will be worth it.”

“Listen, let’s stop talking about people dying,” Nathaniel said. “Even supposing that we did want to kill him, we’d have to find a way to get to the King.”

“We already know that he’s going to be giving a speech today,” Bennett said.

Nathaniel sighed. “How will you kill him at the speech?”

“If I get close enough, I can kill him. I can strike his body with lightning. You can shoot him. I can poison him.”

“He will have bodyguards,” Nathaniel said. “The moment that anyone realizes that anything is wrong, they’ll be coming for you faster than you could ever imagine.”

“And I know that you’ll be able to deal with them and distract them,” Bennett said. “I’ve seen you in action.”

“You’ll need to get off afterwards.”

“It’s a lot easier to get off of the Cloud City than to get on it,” Bennett said, trying to rapidly think. He’d never thought about how to subtly kill someone—his skills had never been needed for subtlety. “What about a poison? You could even use a contact poison, if you got close enough. If you used one that was slow acting enough, we’d even have some time to get away before they look for people. But where could we even find anything deadly enough in the next hour or so?”

Nathaniel’s face was curiously blank. Bennett blinked a few times—slowly some of the pieces started to connect themselves.

“Wait,” Bennett said. “You seem to know an awful lot about the obstacles for someone who just came here to steal some cobaltinium.”

Nathaniel’s face stayed impassive and yet there was almost something shifty in his eyes, something guilty.

Bennett’s mouth dropped open and he immediately leaned forward and began to grope around the pockets of Nathaniel’s pants. Nathaniel squeezed his eyes closed and groaned. “It’s in the bottom of my shoe,” he said. “You’re not going to find anything in those pockets other than requiring a detour.”

“What were you thinking?” Bennett hissed.

Nathaniel looked around them and then pushed Bennett backwards, cautiously opening up a door and once he had confirmed it was empty, dragging Bennett into it by the wrist. Once they were in, he began speaking, his voice low but harsh.

“I was thinking that with the finally successful assassination of Prince Grayson’s most powerful mage-guard, an assassination ordered by King Carlton, that we had weeks at most before King Carlton successfully assassinated Prince Grayson. I was thinking that King Carlton had a waiting army of powerful mages at his disposal who would follow his will blindly. I was thinking that if I hesitated, all of East Andna would be lost. That the sacrifices that my parents made, that millions of my countrymen have made would have been in vain. Prince Grayson cares about the people. He’s given his life to trying to build up East Andna—he has supported us from the moment of his majority. He could make all of Andna great instead of feasting upon it for himself. I was thinking that I would rather die than live under King Carlton. If I did nothing, it would be worse than death.”

Bennett wanted to feel betrayed. He should be hurt, his trust broken. But he felt the same anger within him, had known from the moment that he’d made the decision that he would do whatever it took to make this right. He might be the only person able to make this right, to unspool this horrible monstrosity of a situation.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Bennett said, but it was half-hearted at best.

Nathaniel laughed. “Yes, you can,” he said.

“Yes, I can,” Bennett said. “What was the original plan?”

“You’d set off a bunch of benign alarms when you tried to get into the Sciences Center, I would take advantage of the distraction to lose you—an ally has hacked a backdoor for me into the King’s quarters. I’d use the bio-implanter to get one of his guard’s biomarkers, so that I could get into his rooms. I would leave contact poison in a place that he would touch,” Nathaniel said. “Or that was the goal. Plenty of weak points for it to go wrong but it was the best that we could do.”

Bennett’s eyes flicked down to where Nathaniel still held his wrist, Nathaniel’s palm warm against Bennett. Neither one of them moved and Bennett’s pulse sped up. He wondered if Nathaniel could feel his heart racing, feel each pulse of Bennett’s blood as it moved through his arteries. He didn’t need to be a mage to feel the answering call of Nathaniel’s heart, a counterpoint to each beat of Bennett’s.

“Are you really sure that you want to do this?” Nathaniel asked. “There’s no going back from this. If you regret it, you will regret it forever.”

“Or as long as it takes to be executed for treason,” Bennett said, trying for humor, but it fell flat.

“We will succeed,” Nathaniel said. “I’ve never failed yet.”

“I cannot possibly regret it more than I regret what I did for my years of service as a King’s mage,” Bennett said. “I can’t fix or undo what I did. I can stop it from happening again. From a new generation being forced to do what I did.”

Nathaniel sighed and then wryly smiled. “Well, I guess it can’t hurt to have an extremely powerful mage helping me.”

“Probably not,” Bennett said.

They went back to the storage room where Nathaniel pulled out a skin patch. Bennett realized that Nathaniel was bleeding, blood trickling down his arm. Bennett closed his eyes—it had been his fault.

“Here, I’ll do it,” Bennett said. He expected some kind of pushback, but Nathaniel handed over the patch and stood still as Bennett rolled up his sleeve to get a better. Bennett felt the urge to run his fingers over the pale skin in front of him, but he resisted, carefully placing the patch against Nathaniel’s arm.

The patch immediately adhered to Nathaniel’s arm, and then Nathaniel winced as he was injected with a cocktail of drugs to bind the wound and prevent infection.

“How do you feel?” Bennett asked.

“Fine,” Nathaniel said. “You think that this is painful? Try taking a few to the body.”

“How are you even alive?” Bennett asked.

“Sheer tenacity,” Nathaniel said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. The speech is in an hour.”

“He’s going to be speaking in the Old Oak courtyard,” Bennett said. “They’re going to be doing it there. But you can’t poison him in his quarters. It’s far too risky—it would be a suicide mission to get close enough to him to make sure that it got on him and if you placed it somewhere ahead of time and left it to chance, there’s no guarantee of it happening.”

“Actually, I was thinking something else entirely. Now that I know that I have you on my side. And that you have magic on _your_ side.”

“Okay,” Bennett said slowly.

“I’m going to set up a gun,” Nathaniel said.

“Uh huh,” Bennett said.

“And I’m going to set it to go off during his speech,” Nathaniel said.

“How are you going to avoid it being detected?” Bennett said. “They could find it before they sweep the area.”

“You’re going to ensure that it stays hidden,” Nathaniel said. “And then, we get the hell out of there once it kills him.”

“What if they find the gun even with my magic?”

“They won’t,” Nathaniel said. “Your magic is too strong. Also, this is a safe place for the King. He and his guards won’t be expecting it. And I know that you can do it. I’ve seen you in action.”

“This is a terrible plan,” Bennett said.

“Or an incredibly brilliant one.”

“Incredibly likely to end up with one or both of us did.”

Nathaniel sighed. “Ok, how would you do it?” 

Bennett thought. He liked being able to take his time. Think his way through problems. Magic opened up a world of opportunities, but one needed to fully understand what one was trying to do and how magic could propagate that goal.

“It needs some refinement,” Bennett said.

“We don’t have time for refinement,” Nathaniel said.

Bennett cloaked them with an obscurity spell, as they went back through the basement. It seemed lighter now, more awake, as if the basement had come to life while they’d been furtively trying to get through it.

As they left the room, Bennett whispered a spell to keep the door locked as Nathaniel looked on.

“You honestly haven’t done any magic since you left?” Nathaniel asked. Bennett shot him a look. As familiar and welcoming as it felt to have his magic back, it also felt rusty, a tool that had been sitting out in the rain too long or left at the back of a shed. But there was no judgment in Nathaniel’s face. He almost looked impressed.

“I swore that I wouldn’t,” Bennett said. He humorlessly chuckled. “I guess I didn’t last all that long in the scheme of things.”

“Not even to make your life easier? Not even to save your life? You could have defended yourself when I attacked you,” Nathaniel said.

“You had those wonderful ferry cuffs,” Bennett said. “So, it’s a little more doubtful.”

“Honestly, I didn’t know if those would even contain you,” Nathaniel said. “I’ve seen you in action. There was a risk that you could have blown those out of the water and cursed me to high hell.”

Bennett laughed. “You’re very brave.”

“Or very desperate,” Nathaniel said and the two of them sobered.

“Here,” Bennett said, holding out his hand. “Let me work the gun and then we, but really you, set it up.”

“You just need to make sure that it stays undiscovered by anyone,” Nathaniel said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

They emerged out of the stairs back on to the main floor—now that the plans had changed, no need to sneak into the Sciences Center in order to furtively steal some rare metals—they only needed to make sure that they could attend the King’s speech.

“Ah, Mage Keasey,” Head Mage Glenhorn said, causing Bennett to practically jump up in the air.

Bennett swallowed. “Head Mage Glenhorn, I didn’t expect to see you—there, right now.”

Head Mage Glenhorn stood in front of him, looking the same as he always did. Head Mage Glenhorn always seemed abnormally tall in Bennett’s recollections, but he was no taller than the average man, his silver hair pulled back into a bun, and dressed in a formal suit. His thin glasses sat perched on his nose, almost as an afterthought.

“Well, you are right near my office,” Head Mage Glenhorn said.

“Yes,” Bennett said quickly, forcing himself not to look at Nathaniel. “I have forgotten a lot of things, but never that.”

“It’s good to see you,” Head Mage Glenhorn said, smiling broadly and coming up to clasp his hands on Bennett’s shoulders. “We have missed you here.”

“I’ve missed you too,” Bennett said, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. He wanted to leave—no, he needed to leave, to get far away from this man. No, he told himself. He needed to play nice. He needed to take his discomfort and put it to the side. He had a job to do and he needed to get it done.

“I take it that this is your assistant,” Head Mage Glenhorn said and Bennett looked over at Nathaniel, who had an easy-going smile on his face, his hand outstretched to shake Head Mage Glenhorn’s hand.

“Y-es,” Bennett said, beginning to feel like an old record. “My assistant, Vincent Langley. He works in my apothecary.”

“Very good,” Head Mage Glenhorn said. “I know that we have our meeting scheduled for later this afternoon, but why don’t we do it now, get it out of the way. I’m not sure if you’ve been told, but the King is giving a commemorative speech today. This way you’ll be able to enjoy it fully instead of stressing through it. Wouldn’t you prefer that?”

“Right as always, Head Mage,” Bennett said even as his heart plummeted and began beating even more rapidly.

Would they have enough time? Bennett threw a look to Nathaniel. Nathaniel nodded back reassuringly and then inclined his head slightly towards the exit. Nathaniel would go to plant the gun himself. But what if it was discovered? Bennett could also try to hide the area that it was placed in. That would increase their chances. Or was Nathaniel’s original plan better? Bennett could feel himself start to panic.

“Don’t worry about me, Mage Keasey,” Nathaniel said in a deferential tone that Bennett had never heard before. “I’ll avail myself of the facilities while you go with the Head Mage.”

“Yes, of course,” Bennett said faintly.

Head Mage Glenhorn nodded benevolently at Nathaniel and then nodded for Bennett to follow up. Bennett’s heart immediately sped up even though he knew that he should be fine. He’d passed this all before, he should be able to pass it all again.

They went into Head Mage Glenhorn’s office, while Bennett tried to look as upbeat and comfortable as humanly possible. Head Mage Glenhorn’s office looked as it always had—various artifacts and materials lining his walls, a large desk and chair behind it near the back of the room and several tables on which to work magic. A closed door to the side led to a larger room, which Bennett knew led to a larger, protected working area if the Head Mage wanted to do any magic of consequence.

Even though Bennett knew that it was his imagination, it felt cold in Head Mage Glenhorn’s office. And ominous. What if Bennett’s ability to shield himself had worsened over the years? It wasn’t like he had practiced.

Head Mage Glenhorn took a seat at his desk and gestured for Bennett to sit opposite him. “So, you think that you may be able to practice magic again,” Head Mage Glenhorn said.

Bennett nodded quickly, his head jerking. “Yes—maybe,” he said. “I can feel flickers of it sometimes and every so often, I feel like if I tried a spell, the magic would respond to me.”

“That’s very encouraging,” Head Mage Glenhorn said and his eagerness was plain to see on his face. “I can’t lie and say that we haven’t missed having a mage of your caliber here with us. If you had the ability to practice magic again, it would be an amazing thing for us.”

Bennett nodded. He could just imagine how great of a thing it would be for the King’s forces if Bennett were back.

Head Mage Glenhorn eyed Bennett critically. “I don’t suppose that you could try doing some magic, even small magic?”

Bennett shook his head. “I haven’t had any luck trying to do anything—at least not yet. Whenever I feel like it’s right there and I try to reach within myself, there’s nothing there.”

“Well, I don’t want to get your hopes up,” Head Mage Glenhorn said. “That may just be what we call phantom energy. Your body remembering what it used to be able to feel and harness.” He looked again at Bennett. “Ok, I’m just going to see what I can feel. That will let us know either way.”

Bennett forced his body to relax. Head Mage Glenhorn began to chant, focused on Bennett, and Bennett felt the whispers of magic extend out from Head Mage Glenhorn, reaching out to Bennett, feeling for any evidence of the same in Bennett. Head Mage Glenhorn’s magic called to Bennett, but Bennett forced it to remain silent, to let the magic sweep through his body, as if Bennett’s own magic were as inert as a piece of brick.

It took no small amount of concentration and effort, and Bennett found himself sweating by the time that Head Mage Glenhorn stopped. He frowned and then sighed, taking off his glasses and pinching his nose.

“I’m afraid that I have bad news,” Head Mage Glenhorn said. “While I can sense some residual magic remaining within you, I do not think that it is enough to actually control magic, to possess the will and power needed to properly use magic again.”

Bennett led out a sad sound, as if the news was devastating him.

“Now, now,” Head Mage Glenhorn said. “There is no use crying over spilt milk. Your contributions to the war time effort have not been forgotten. You were magnificent and you advanced the Andnan cause more than you can know.”

Something almost like boldness made Bennett ask. “Are you still continuing the war programs for children here at the Magical Facilities.”

Head Mage Glenhorn shook his head. “I’m afraid not. We do have a small contingent of young pupils, but their training is entirely within the usual way.”

“Perhaps for the best,” Bennett said. “With the peace with East Andna and hopes for reconciliation, I can’t imagine that there’s a lot of use for what I once was.”

There was a gleam in Head Mage Glenhorn’s eyes, an intensity that almost scared Bennett. “I wouldn’t say that,” he said softly and every hair on the back of Bennett’s neck raised. “But it is no matter.”

Bennett did not pursue the conversation further.

When Bennett emerged from the Head Mage Glenhorn’s office, Nathaniel was waiting for him. It was such a relief to see Nathaniel that he almost reached out for a hug, instead, changing at the last minute to rest his hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder. The contact grounded him, made him feel almost comfortable again—connected to the one person that he wanted to be near.

They walked away from the Head Mage’s office. Once they were out of earshot, Bennett whispered, “Did you do it?”

Nathaniel nodded. “I installed it in one of the buildings overlooking the courtyard.”

With some time before the King’s speech was due to start, but also knowing that they wanted to make sure that they had a spot in the crowd that would let them see both the speech and make an easy getaway, Bennett and Nathaniel meandered towards the Old Oak courtyard, situated adjacent to the King’s castle and the public gardens.

They must have talked about something, but for the life of him, Bennett couldn’t remember it. His heart felt like it was beating irregularly, painfully hard, his breath coming too quick. On the other end of the spectrum, Nathaniel seemed fine and he kept reaching over and rubbing Bennett’s arm.

Bennett had completed hundreds of missions in his life, but it felt like those were against an impersonal enemy with the support of his country behind him. Here, he knew his enemy. And as for support, which while he likely had East Andna’s, he couldn’t have predicted West Andna’s. They could succeed and he could reasonably spend the rest of his life in jail before dying in a particularly unpleasant way.

As they got walked through the outskirts of the gardens, on their way to the courtyard, and closer to when they would need to find a place to stand, Nathaniel pulled Bennett off of the path and over to a shaded area between two trees. Bennett tried not to wring his hands.

“What if something goes wrong?” he asked.

“I will take care of it,” Nathaniel said. “I’m good at what I do. Trust me.”

And that was strange—Nathaniel asking Bennett to trust him. Nathaniel, the man who had held Bennett hostage with a knife. Who had threatened to kill the only people that he cared about. Or the only ones that he had thought that he cared about. It was no longer a shock to realize that he cared about Nathaniel too—that he would be sad if something happened to him. That he wanted to protect Nathaniel—even if it probably was a one-way street. He cared about the young mages here. He cared about East Andna. He cared about Andna as a whole.

“I do,” Bennett said. “I do trust you.”

Nathaniel looked up at that, as if he’d just realized what he’d asked of Bennett. “I—I trust you too,” he said slowly and one of his hands came up to grip Bennett’s shoulders. All of a sudden, Bennett grasped just how close they are, that their faces were just a few breaths apart, and his whole body went hot and then cold, deliciously so, and Bennett swallowed. “I shouldn’t,” Nathaniel said. “And you shouldn’t. After what we’ve done to each other.”

“But I do,” Bennett said and his voice was down to a whisper, cracking in the middle.

Neither one of them moved though Bennett desperately wanted to—wanted to move forward to get closer, wanted to move back and shake some sense into his head. He wanted something, but it wasn’t the time or place. And that thought would have been enough to make him laugh some other time—kissing Nathaniel Langren in some other place at some other time. But it wasn’t funny in the slightest.

“To Andna,” Nathaniel said.

“To Andna,” Bennett echoed.

They were not the first to enter the courtyard—it was fast filling with people from the King’s castle, the Sciences Center, the Magical Facilities, there were off-duty King’s guards there and people who worked in the various governmental buildings in the Cloud City. The space would probably allow almost a thousand people, with a hundred of the more privileged and high-ranking officials sitting up in front to hear the King speak.

Nathaniel and Bennett found a spot to the side, not far from where they entered, where they could lean against the cool stone and still see where the King would speak. There was a raised dais in the center, where the King would speak and an ornate podium on it.

If Bennett had had a lot more time, he could have layered a subtle enchantment into the courtyard. The King’s mage guards would almost certainly have enchantments on the King to prevent harm to him and although Bennett had done his own enchantments on the gun and bullets, he would have felt more confident if he could have neutralized the counter-enchantments.

But there was no way to do so without attracting attention, and any attention in this space today would risk their mission even further. 

Nathaniel gave Bennett a hard look, as if he knew what Bennett was thinking. “It’ll be ok,” he said.

“Ok,” Bennett said, because what else could he say?

At quarter until eleven, Head Mage Glenhorn lead a contingent of mages out into the courtyard, taking almost a third of the designated seats. Not long after, several high-ranking military officers entered as well, nodding at the mages, followed by other people that Bennett couldn’t recognize until almost all of the seats were filled.

The sun had risen high over the courtyard by the time that eleven o’clock was sounded. Any second now…

“Entering now, his Majesty, his Royal Highness, King Carlton III of Andna,” came a voice through the courtyard. Everyone stood for the King’s entrance and Bennett was grateful for the excuse as everyone else also turned to watch him enter.

King Carlton was man who looked younger than his years. He was approaching forty, but looked almost still boyish. He strolled out confidently, everyone on their feet clapping for him. He wore a dark blue silk suit and he gave the impression that he was unperturbed by human considerations, such as money or weather or security.

Another wave of guilt washed over Bennett. He reminded himself of the room in the basement. The feel of the straps and buckles pushing into his skin as he tried to escape the pain coursing through him.

With held breath, Bennett watched the King as he approached the dais. Next to Bennett, in sharp contrast, Nathaniel’s posture was relaxed. This was what he did. This was his job. He’d done this before. It was going to be fine.

One step up onto the dais. Then another. Closer to the podium. Another step closer. Bennett’s heart was going to burst out of his chest. The King stood in front of the podium.

“It is a great honor to be before you today,” the King said. “To speak on the twentieth anniversary of my mother’s death. This year, in commemoration of her, we have begun construction on a monument to celebrate her life and by celebrating her life, all of Andna.”

Bennett looked over at Nathaniel. “When is it going to happen?”

“We want to let him get a few minutes into his speech, just when people are both beginning to relax and not pay as close attention so that there’s more confusion.”

Bennett counted seconds, trying to anticipate when Nathaniel would do it. Eventually, with a tap, Nathaniel pressed against Bennet’s hand and signaled five fingers, then four, then three, then two, then one.

A loud series of _cracks_ rang out in the courtyard, the King flying back in what seemed like slow motion. For a second, there was only silence, and then the King’s guard began yelling out, mages immediately casting spells and a protective circle forming around the King. Bennett felt his heart in his throat. The combined might of the guard mages immediately sealed all possible exits and entrances, various detection spells being sent over the crowd and the surrounding buildings.

People began yelling, but Bennett ignored them. Had it been done? Was it now over?

The King staggered up, his left shoulder and face bleeding. “Get reinforcements in here!” he shouted. “There are traitors here.” He pointed at the audience and the charm that had amplified his voice during his speech was still working, the King’s apoplectic rage coming through.

The King drew a deep breath. “Kill each one of them until the traitors are brought forth,” he said, his voice clear and the crowd, as one gasped, people beginning to scream with fear.

Bennett didn’t know what to do, Nathaniel was frozen behind him. Bennett had been so convinced that it would succeed, that even their deaths hadn’t been an obstacle. But to die having failed so badly? And causing the death of every other person, innocent or not in this courtyard.

“We have to do something,” Bennett said.

“Let me think,” Nathaniel said, biting his lower lip. But there was no more time, the guards had already started rounding people up and Bennett knew what was going to happen. Nathaniel would try to fight his way out of this. But there was just too many of them. Bennett and Nathaniel would die, everyone in this courtyard would die regardless of their own complicity in the King’s plans, more children would be tortured and East Andna would be squashed back into devastation.

Bennett reached out with his power—he hadn’t attempted magic like this since the war and he wasn’t exactly sure of how successful it would be. But he was desperate. He saw everyone’s life force in the courtyard and, careful of how delicate they were, he reached out and held everyone firmly, halting all movement.

The guards stopped in their tracks, their bodies immobile. The King stood within his protective circle, incandescent rage on his face. Several hundred voices quieted as one as the mages around him froze, looks of horror on their faces.

He wouldn’t be able to hold the mages long—he could already feel them drawing upon their power as well, trying to break out of Bennett’s grip and Bennett grunted, rebuffing it.

“Bennett,” Nathaniel breathed quietly, the only movement in the courtyard.

“We don’t have much time,” Bennett gritted out. Even now, he could feel his energy reserves draining away. He would need more power. “I need a knife.” Nathaniel handed it over without a word. Taking a deep breath, Bennett pressed into the handle, the blade sharpening, and then made deep cuts on each of his palms, clenching his fingers and letting him use into his own energy. 

Bennett took a deep breath and reached forward, letting himself isolate the King. Bennett began to chant as invisible fingers grasped around the King’s throat. He hadn’t wanted it to come to this, but there was no other option.

“I’m sorry,” Bennett said, although he wasn’t sure if it was for what he had already done or was about to do. And then, picking up the pace of his words, he closed the King’s airway. Nathaniel sucked in a breath as the King choked but he reached out and rested his hand along Bennett’s arm and Bennett let himself take solace in that.

When it was done, the King fell back bonelessly onto the ground. Nathaniel had already started turning, trying to direct Bennett out. “No, wait,” Bennett said. “I need to do something else.”

He carefully walked over to Head Mage Glenhorn, Nathaniel trailing behind him and relaxed his grip just enough to let the mage speak. “Where are the children being kept?” Bennett asked.

“I should have known it was you. You were always weak.” Head Mage Glenhorn said and his will pushed against Bennett’s, so Bennett clamped down and his voice deepened as he let compulsion layer through his words. 

“You will tell me,” Bennett said.

“You’re pathetic,” Head Mage Glenhorn said, his nose beginning to bleed as he fought the compulsion.

For a long moment, it was just the two of them, locked in a battle, Bennett back in rooms where he received his weekly “lessons” from the Head Mage as a child. Bennett fought against the straps, begged for it to be over and with a superhuman effort, Bennett wrenched himself from the room to what he needed to do now. “Tell me!” Bennett said, throwing himself into it.

“The commissary,” Head Mage Glenhorn ground out, sweat forming on his face as he tried and failed to fight back.

Bennett sighed with relief.

“You think that you’re going to get them?” Head Mage Glenhorn said, his face now the dull pink color of a cooked salmon. “I’ll kill you myself and enjoy every second of it.”

Bennett tried to respond, so scared of it being true that he could feel it in each heartbeat. Head Mage Glenhorn looked to speak again and then there was the crack of another bullet and Head Mage Glenhorn slumped down to the ground.

“We need to get out of there now,” Nathaniel said, putting his gun away, but Bennett was already moving, his energy trained on the unmoving tableau around him. They needed to get over to the Magical Facilities—he’d have to go through the gardens to get to the Magical Facilities’ commissary.

“I’m not leaving without those kids,” Bennett said.

“We don’t have time,” Nathaniel said. Annoyance and anger rose up within Bennett and he swatted it down. He didn’t have energy to spare.

“Leave then without me. I’ll figure it out,” Bennett said and then sped up, leaving the courtyard behind and beginning to walk quickly on the nearest path that would take him over towards the Magical Facilities.

Nathaniel put on burst of speed, keeping pace. “How long can you hold everyone like that?” he asked.

“Long enough. But we’ll be found out soon. The mages and guards presumably had already called for reinforcements—I’m just delaying the inevitable. I put a slight compulsion to stay away around the courtyard, but I don’t have the energy for much more.”

“That was crazy,” Nathaniel breathed out. “I had no idea—” at the look that Bennett shot him, he closed his mouth. “Ok, let me think.” Bennett kept moving past the gorgeous trees and well-maintained flower gardens, keeping an eye out for any guards. Any moment now, there was bound to be a whole contingent that would show up. Not to mention the lock-down that would be occurring at the landing bay. Shit. Bennett forced himself to focus on the thing in front of him—he could handle getting off this cursed place when he got to it.

“Can you just hide us?” Nathaniel asked.

Bennett shook his head. He would only use more magic if he absolutely needed to. Every last bit of his energy needed to be conserved.

“Ok, meet me in the aviary training yard in fifteen minutes.” Without waiting for Bennett’s response, Nathaniel took off at a run. Bennett didn’t have time to think about Nathaniel—he would have to take care of himself.

Bennett got to the front of the Magical Facilities and took a second to take a few deep breaths. No one was around—apparently most of the mages had either been at the speech or were otherwise occupied. He could feel the mages working against him even now, fighting against Bennett’s magic—he just needed to keep them at bay long enough.

The cuts in his palms had clotted up and there would almost certainly be more magic to be worked, so he gritted his teeth and pulled out Nathaniel’s s-knife. When he tried to sharpen it, the knife stayed relatively dull and Bennett cursed. Taking a deep breath and gritting his teeth, he reopened the initial cuts, the pain overwhelming for a moment, before he pushed through it and then marched through the doors, heading up for the stairs up to the third floor where the commissary lay.

It was on the early side for lunch and fairly empty. To the far right, a group of boys and girls ranging from five to fifteen ate their lunches, a senior supervising mage sitting with them. He counted six kitchen staff members at the opposite side of the room where lunch was served. He closed his eyes for a second feeling out even farther but there was thankfully no one else around.

Bennett immediately threw out his hands, grabbing at the energies of each person in the room, pinning the mage and everyone except the kids in place. The room went silent although it took the kids at the table a moment to realize something was wrong. Slowly their gazes looked up to Bennett.

“I don’t have much time,” Bennett said to group, who all looked somewhat reasonably unnerved. He tried to think how to handle this—maybe he should have had Nathaniel help him. Nathaniel was the one who came up with the plans. Bennett wasn’t much good at thinking one step ahead, much the less five steps ahead. And he was terrible with kids.

“I’m Mage Bennett Keasey. Umm.” He stopped, unsure where to go from there.

“We know who you are,” one of the kids said, an older boy. He might have been there while Bennett was there, although his face didn’t look familiar.

“I’m here because I didn’t know that they were still doing forced expansion of your abilities. But, I know now. They did it to me and I don’t want them to do it to you.”

He made a split-second decision. “I’m taking the younger kids with me—there’s not going to be any more of them being taken into the basement for lessons with pain. No more galenite euthimun.” He looked to the older boys and girls in the group, about six of them ranging from ten to fifteen years old. He willed them to understand, to trust him even though they had no reason to. This was probably the only home that they had ever known. “You guys can decide for yourselves. I can’t promise anything other than that I’ll get you off out of this place. If you want to come with me, you can.”

An older girl, probably around thirteen, raised her hand. “Will you hurt us if we stay?” she asked. “Are you going to do to us what you’re doing to Mage Acton?”

Bennett shook his head. “I won’t hurt you—and they’re not in pain. I’ve just made it so that they can’t stop me.” He tried to think how he would get out of there with eight young kids. It had seemed so logical in his head when he’d been back at the courtyard.

The girl thought for a second. “Will we still learn about magic?”

“I don’t know,” Bennett said.

“But you’re not going to strap us into the beds for our lessons?”

Bennett shook his head. “I won’t.”

“What about—” the girl started again.

“Look, I really don’t have much time. If I’m here any longer, a lot of people are going to burst in here and arrest me,” Bennett said. “If I’m lucky.”

The girl’s mouth twisted and she breathed out. “Ok, I’m coming too. Isabel, Garrett, Jasper, Sabrina, Oliver, Theo, Hazel, Violet, come over here. We’re going to go with this man.”

“But,” one of the little boys, probably around six years old, said, his lip beginning to pout.

“No, Garrett,” the girl said. Another older boy, probably one of the oldest, picked up Garrett and grabbed one of the girls by the hand, coming to stand by Bennett.

“I’m coming too,” the older boy said.

“Me too,” another girl said. Another boy walked over, grabbing the hands of two of the kids. Within another minute, the rest of the kids had come to stand by Bennett.

“Are you sure?” Bennett asked, before his mind could filter it out. The first girl, who seemed to be the leader of the group, rolled her eyes.

“Of course,” Bennett said. Unexpected, but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially since it was taking almost all of his effort to keep his magic up and working back in the courtyard and there in the commissary. The mages in the courtyard would be able to break through at any moment and if he drew anymore blood energy from himself, he’d risk dying before he could get the kids out of there.

“Ok,” Bennett said, his breathing beginning to labor. “Follow me.”

The odd entourage followed Bennett out of the commissary and down through the stairs. His legs were beginning to feel like rubber, but he pushed on. His awareness ranged out as they walked towards the aviary training yard, testing to see if anyone had alerted the guards. Someone would be coming for them, Bennett just needed to outlast whomever it was.

“We need to go to the aviary training yard,” Bennett said when they got to the bottom of the stairs. “Just pretend that I’m your usual teacher and that there’s nothing at all unusual about what’s going on. We don’t want anyone paying attention to us.”

“I can do a really good concealment spell,” one of the boys said.

“Sure,” Bennett said, because it wasn’t like it was going to hurt them all that much if the kid failed at it.

There were people running around when they got outside the Magical Facilities, members of the army running up the path towards the courtyard, although they didn’t pay much attention to Bennett and the kids at first. Bennett could feel his control over the Old Oak courtyard continue to weaken—they didn’t have much time.

“We need to walk faster,” Bennett told the group and picked up the pace—the older kids did their part to help, picking up the younger kids and matching Bennett’s speed.

Every step that Bennett took almost hurt, his sweat soaking through his clothing and his face painfully flushed.

“You need to go back to the Magical Facilities,” a guard yelled to them, coming out of the armory. Bennett ignored him and had the kids start actually running. “Stop!” the man yelled and immediately a host of other people turned towards them, speaking into transmitters and drawing their weapons.

They were running now as fast as the kids could go now and Bennett began chanting, sending out a wave of heat behind him to warn off the guards.

“Where are we going?” the leader of the kids asked as they drew closer to the aviary training yard. The first half of the training yard was an enclosed hangar opening up into the open-air landing strip. Nathaniel hadn’t told him where to meet, so Bennett took a guess. “Go for the runways, right where the military ships land and take off,” Bennett said. “I’m going to put up some protective spells—the guards are almost certainly going to start shooting at us.”

The girl’s mouth tightened but she nodded and began chanting as well, familiar words that meant that she was also going to try and shield them.

As Bennett began chanting to also shield the group, his luck ran out. Upon entering the sleek hangar, metal beams crisscrossing over their heads, more than a few guards and air men gave shout, drawing their weapons. In trying to hold up the shield, Bennett dropped his holds over the courtyard and Magical Facilities’ commissary and what felt like all of his blood rushed out of his head.

The shield dropped for a second, but Bennett forced himself to begin again, pulling all of his energy and the magic around him together. With what felt like a heroic effort, Bennett raised a wall of fire that acted as a semi-barrier.

“Bennett?” Nathaniel’s voice squeaked to life on Bennett’s transmitter and Bennett’s heart gave a jolt—he’d completely forgotten that he had it.

“I’m straight ahead,” Nathaniel’s voice directed. “Look up.” Bennett did and saw Nathaniel at the mouth of an unknown air ship, the ship’s munitions shooting out at the hangar and providing them cover. Bennett’s heart gave another leap, a happy excited leap, and he didn’t think that he’d ever been so excited to see someone in his life. Bennett raised the walls of fire around them and extended them to provide a clear pathway to the ship.

“Go!” Bennett told the kids. “As fast as you can.” He couldn’t keep this up for much longer. His own blood pulsed sluggishly through him. Come on, he told himself. Just a little farther.

Nathaniel looked surprised when the first kid ran up, but he let the kid on, then ushering the rest onto the ship. The older kids herded the younger, with Bennett in the rear.

Each step up the walkway felt like an eternity of pain and his vision started to go black as Bennett made it through the door. Nathaniel immediately pressed something on the panel near the door and the door closed, the ship shaking for a minute and then beginning to move upwards.

“When you said that you were getting the kids, I assumed you meant a few,” Nathaniel said. “Not a full tribe.”

“Don’t let them shoot us out of the sky,” Bennett said and then the blackness spread fully across his vision.

Bennett wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he came back to himself. It came in fits and starts—a full achiness in his body and what seemed like every cell sore beyond belief. He felt his blood throbbing and a tacky dirtiness covering him. Each limb weighed heavily and it took Bennett a long time to find the energy to force his eyes open. That was to say nothing of the surprise of waking up at all.

“Oh, thank god,” Nathaniel said, somewhere near his left ear. He sounded genuinely relieved, like he would have been unhappy if something had happened to Bennett. His hand lay on Bennett’s and it squeezed Bennett’s hand tightly.

Bennett’s vision blurred, red and black, as Bennett tried to get his eyes to focus. Eventually a fuzzy version of Nathaniel came into being.

“What happened?” Bennett croaked out.

“You almost died, that’s what happened,” Nathaniel said, but he hadn’t moved his hand away. If anything, he held it harder. After a moment, Nathaniel cleared his throat and then sat up straighter. “According to the multitude of children that you brought onto this ship, you almost killed yourself by depleting your body’s energy.”

Bennett knew that—he wanted to know the important things. They must have gotten away, right? They had to. His throat was too dry though and when he tried to speak, he ended up coughing, so Nathaniel maneuvered him into an upright position, keeping one hand on Bennett’s back and the other reaching for a glass of water. He carefully lifted it to Bennett’s lips and Bennett drank small gulps until almost half of it was gone.

“Did we get away?” Bennett asked.

Nathaniel nodded. “All thanks to you.”

“Definitely not,” Bennett said.

Nathaniel laughed, but it came out pained. “Bennett, you made sure of it. Bennett—you were incredible out there.” And he looked like he actually meant it.

Bennett looked down at his hands. Nathaniel’s hand had come back and was curled on top of Bennet’s own. Nathaniel’s hand was strong and warm and it felt right to have it there. But when Nathaniel saw that Bennett was looking at it, he abruptly moved it back.

“No,” Bennett said. “I mean—you can leave it there. If you like. Because I liked it there.” His face went warm but at least the upside of almost dying meant that he wasn’t really too embarrassed about this in the scheme of things. He’d almost just died; he could handle Nathaniel’s rejection.

“Ok,” Nathaniel said easily and he put his hand back on top of Bennett’s. After a moment, he turned Bennett’s hand over and interlaced their fingers together.

“The good news is that we did get away. The even better news is that the calvary showed up. With the King dead and half of the mages recovering from what you did, the military seemed very willing to engage in talks with the Prince’s envoys.

A deep sense of relief spread through Bennett. There was no doubt that there would be plenty of rocky challenges ahead, but he’d done what he’d set out to do—even if he hadn’t known it at the start.

“What next?” Bennett asked, although he hoped that the answer was that he got to sleep for twenty-four hours before he had to figure out what to do with a bunch of child mages.

Nathaniel shrugged and then leaned in, pressing his lips to Bennett’s. For a moment, Bennett froze in astonishment and then he kissed Nathaniel back. Nathaniel kissed like he’d been wanting to do this for ages, his body surging around Bennett’s and carefully holding him close. He kept leaving Bennett’s lips to find new places to kiss before coming right back, as if that was his new magnetic north.

It didn’t seem possible—Nathaniel wanting to kiss Bennett, but since everything else that Bennett had thought that he known about himself, about the world, about Nathaniel, had changed in the last week, it was perhaps the only thing that still made sense.

Eventually, after a little more (ecstatically wonderful) kissing, Nathaniel insisted that Bennett actually take a rest. “What’s going to happen?” Bennett asked.

“I don’t know,” Nathaniel said. “But I’m hopeful. I think it might turn out alright. We’ve got a bunch of kids—some of whom will be able to go back to families. And we’ll figure out how to handle the rest.”

“That’s good,” Bennett said. “I like that plan.”

“I do come up with the best plans,” Nathaniel said, smiling. And he held Bennett’s hand until he slipped back into sleep.


End file.
